The Hallmarked Man

42

Strike spent New Year’s Eve on surveillance in the Stapleton Tavern in Haringey, watching Plug drink in the new year with a group of equally rough-looking friends. He used the time productively. He and Jade Semple had been in intermittent text contact ever since Lucy’s party, and they continued to text backwards and forwards tonight. She was very obviously drunk again. Although she continued to insist that she no longer believed her husband had been the body in the vault, her readiness to keep communicating with Strike suggested a lurking doubt. Strike hoped he might, through sheer persistence, be on the verge of securing a face-to-face interview with her.

He was determined not to pass up the chance of securing an evening alone with Robin in a decent restaurant, hundreds of miles away from Murphy or any other fucker who wanted to interrupt. Of course, if he declared himself and Robin shot him down, the rest of the round trip would be singularly uncomfortable, but there’d always be reasons not to risk it. If the worst happened, he’d simply have to deal with it. He’d accommodated the loss of half a leg, after all.

His partner’s Christmas Day response to his foray into truly imaginative gift-giving had given Strike hope. She must have understood what he was implicitly telling her when she examined those silver charms, all of them freighted with memories and private jokes, mustn’t she? Didn’t opening his present in the early hours of Christmas Day indicate an unusual eagerness to know what he’d given her? The five kisses that had followed her thank you, the use of the word ‘love’ – admittedly followed by ‘it’ rather than ‘you’ – could this be the behaviour of a woman trying to keep a man firmly at arm’s length? And where had Murphy been, while Robin was typing in all those ‘x’s? Was it too much to hope for that they’d had an argument?

Such ruminations enabled Strike to endure the long, unproductive hours watching Plug with good grace. However, on arrival back in cold, deserted Denmark Street at three a.m., his pleasant musings were rudely interrupted.

A large, still wet letter ‘G’ had been painted in scarlet on the street door of the office. Strike stood contemplating it for a full minute, dismissing within seconds the possibility that he was looking at the tag of some drunken graffiti artist. No other door in Denmark Street had been so decorated, and it seemed far too much of a coincidence that anyone should have randomly slapped up the one letter of the alphabet that had recently acquired an ominous double meaning for the agency on the upper floors.

Was he supposed to take this ‘G’ to symbolise the letter emblazoned in the middle of the square and compasses of Freemasonry’s most identifiable sign? Had it been chosen because an eye of providence or an acacia tree would have required more artistry? Or was this a message for Robin, who’d been Witness G in the trial of her rapist and would-be killer?

Inwardly cursing the necessity, Strike hauled himself upstairs to his attic flat, dug out cleaning materials, and returned to the street to remove the letter, though, having no white spirit, he was able only to render what had been there illegible, leaving a large red smear. The door would definitely need repainting before the landlord next saw it.

It was four before Strike finally removed his prosthesis, wondering whether he should tell Robin what had happened. He didn’t want to drag up her rape again. Was this, perhaps, an obvious case of least said, soonest mended?

Only as he connected his mobile to its charging lead did he notice that he’d received a voicemail message at some point overnight, and play it.

‘’S is Valentine Longcaster,’ said a slurred, upper-class voice, against a background of clatter and chatter. ‘I’ve got all your fuckin’ messages. I’ve got nothing to fuckin’ say to you. Do’s all a favour an’ make your new year’s fucking resolution gassing yourself.’

Strike set his alarm, yawned and got into bed. Valentine’s response to the emails Strike had sent him wasn’t a surprise. Several times, when full of drink, cocaine or both, Valentine had informed rooms full of people that this, pointing at Charlotte, was his favourite fucking person in the world. It seemed that, unlike the determinedly oblivious Sacha, Valentine wasn’t prepared to pretend he’d forgotten the contents of Charlotte’s suicide note, in which she’d blamed Strike’s refusal to pick up the phone for the planned overdose, and the slitting of her wrists in her bath.

His phone buzzed. He picked it up to see a text from Jade Semple.

all rightg you can come on the q17hb ut don’t tell noone because they djnat woant me talking to you

Great, Strike texted back, with a shrewd idea who ‘they’, who didn’t want her to talk to him, might be. See you on the seventeenth.

He lay back down to sleep, thinking that the year had, after all, started on a positive note, and already planning strategic manoeuvres that had nothing whatsoever to do with the missing Niall Semple.

43

Several days after returning from Masham and having worked almost non-stop since, Robin still felt as she had done ever since she’d unwrapped Strike’s bracelet: anxious and guilty. Her nervousness resembled the state in which a person waited for exam results, or the outcome of medical tests. When, from time to time, her unruly subconscious made suggestions as to what she might be anticipating, or dreading – she wasn’t sure which – she quelled them as best she could.

Strike’s bracelet was now hidden inside her only evening bag in her wardrobe, but it was hard to forget what she’d drunkenly thought on first examining it. Moreover, she knew that if another woman had shown her the bracelet, and explained the significance of the charms, she’d have responded, ‘I think he might be trying to tell you he’s in love with you.’ What man would give a present so intimate, so full of meaning only two people could understand, without knowing how it might be interpreted?

Yet the gift had been given by Cormoran Strike, he who voluntarily lived in two rooms over his office, alone and self-sufficient. Yes, the recent references to Charlotte’s suicide note might suggest a desire to open a conversation they’d only once before come close to having, while eating curry at the office, when Strike had told her she was his best friend, and she’d thought he might be about to say more, to acknowledge what both of them, she remained convinced, had felt on the day they’d hugged at Robin’s wedding, when she could have sworn he’d considered asking her to run away with him, and leave Matthew standing on the dancefloor…

But he hadn’t spoken at the wedding, had he? Nor in the office, over whisky and curry. In the midst of her guilty deliberations about what might be going on inside Strike’s head, Robin kept bumping back against the conclusion she’d reached in the bathroom of the Prince of Wales pub: that Strike, whether consciously or unconsciously, was playing some kind of game intended to weaken her ties to Murphy, lest she contemplate leaving the agency for a more settled existence.

The thing she’d thought, when sitting, drunk, on her parents’ bathroom floor, felt like a betrayal of the man with whom she was now supposed to be setting up house. She loved Murphy, didn’t she? She’d certainly told him so, and she thought – knew – she did. Barring his two recent cobra strikes of anger, one born of stress, one of jealousy, and both entwined with his own history of drinking and the failure of his marriage, they hardly ever argued. He was kind and intelligent, and she couldn’t have asked more of him in the aftermath of the ectopic pregnancy. He’d never expressed an opinion on how much she earned, or complained about the old Land Rover, or what everyone else seemed to see as her rackety career. Their now-resumed sex life was far more enjoyable than the one Robin had had with Matthew, because Murphy seemed to actually care whether Robin was enjoying herself, whereas Matthew, she realised in retrospect, had mostly wanted applause. He was generous, too: she was currently wearing the opal earrings he’d bought her for Christmas, which matched the pendant her parents had given her for her thirtieth. Most importantly of all, Murphy was open and honest. He didn’t play games, didn’t lie, didn’t compartmentalise his life so that Robin didn’t really know where she stood.

So she owed him similar honesty and transparency, didn’t she? Yet she was increasingly feeling as she supposed unfaithful spouses must do as their lies snowballed and they were kept in a constant state of alertness for the slip that might lead to discovery. If Murphy found out she and Strike were interviewing relatives of other possible William Wrights, he’d know they were investigating the body in the vault, not just trying to find the missing Rupert.

Almost worse: Strike had sent her an itinerary for their visit to Crieff and Ironbridge. He’d booked two sleeper berths to Glasgow for the night of the sixteenth. They were then to pick up a hire car and drive to Crieff to interview the abandoned wife of Niall Semple, before continuing south to Ironbridge, where Tyler Powell’s grandmother lived, breaking their journey overnight in the Lake District. Robin had Googled the Lake District hotel. It looked rather beautiful, with stunning views out over Windermere. She and Strike usually stayed in the cheapest possible accommodation when on investigative trips. Little ripples of nervous excitement kept hitting her at the thought of the place, and she was trying not to analyse them, because she was already burdened with so much guilt. She’d told Murphy the forthcoming three-day trip north was connected to ‘the Fleetwood case’. Thankfully, being as busy as ever at work, Murphy hadn’t asked for many details.

Robin’s nagging feelings of guilt and confusion manifested themselves outwardly as an increased niceness and consideration to her boyfriend. Before they’d returned to London, she’d agreed to put in an offer on the second house they’d viewed, but she’d known all along that it wouldn’t be accepted, and was unsurprised when they heard, at the end of the first week of January, that it had sold for nearly ten thousand pounds more than the most they could have afforded. Now Murphy was sending her the specs of other houses, and she was making half-promises to view them when she had time.

Meanwhile, she was policing and second-guessing every move she made where Strike was concerned. On the dark and dreary evening of New Year’s Day, she arrived home after a stint of surveillance of Plug, who hadn’t stirred since he got back from the pub in the small hours, and had barely pulled off her coat when Strike texted her.

Valentine Longcaster doesn’t want to talk to us. Not a big surprise. He was Charlotte’s biggest fan.

Sitting on her sofa, Robin felt again that thrill of – what? Panic? Excitement? – at the recurrence of Charlotte’s name, but she was determined to appear unflustered and professional, so she texted back:

Pity. I want to know why Rupert crashed Legard’s birthday party. On the subject of trying to get people to talk, I’ve been wondering what you’d think of me trying an approach to Gretchen Schiff, Sofia Medina’s flatmate?

Strike was slow at responding to this suggestion. After five minutes had passed, Robin thought he might have forgotten who Sofia Medina was, and added:

Sofia, the girl whose body was found on the North Wessex Downs. Pink top.

When there was still no answer, Robin took her phone with her into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. Strike’s response came just as the kettle was boiling.

Sorry, thought Mrs TT was on the move, false alarm. I think trying to get Schiff to talk is a good idea. If Medina knew a bloke with dark curly hair who likes wearing sunglasses indoors, we’ve finally got something concrete.

OK, I’ll message Schiff. I’ve found her Instagram.

Robin had a couple more things she wanted to tell Strike, one of which she felt awkward and embarrassed about, while the other might be completely irrelevant to the investigation. While she was wondering whether it mightn’t be easier to broach both of them by text, rather than face to face, Strike texted again.

Newsflash: just heard from Barclay. I put him on Jim Todd this afternoon. Todd cleaned a café for two hours, then made a call from a public phone box and a pointless Tube journey.

How, pointless?

Just sat on the Circle line for an hour, going round, then got off where he got on. There’s definitely something fishy about Todd. Can’t find him in any records. Think he’s using a fake name.

Robin now received a text from Murphy, who was at work. She saw the tell-tale link to rightmove.co.uk, and swiped it away without reading it, instead texting Strike again.

You think Todd’s got a record?

Starting to think it’s odds on.

Having read this message, Robin decided to mention the subject she found awkward. In the small amount of time she’d had over Christmas that hadn’t been dedicated to fretting about her feelings for Strike, or his for her, she’d also been worrying about what he expected her to do regarding porn actor Dangerous Dick de Lion, who, if the cipher note slipped through the office door was to be believed, had been the body in the silver vault. Robin texted:

I wanted to talk to you about Dick de Lion.

There was no immediate response, possibly because Mrs Two-Times was now genuinely on the move. Robin therefore opened Murphy’s text and followed the link to the details of a house in Walthamstow. Unlike most of the two-bed-one-box-room terraced houses he’d sent her, it looked as though it was recently decorated and stood on the end of the terrace. Murphy’s text read:

Only two bedrooms, though.

Exactly how many IVF babies are you hoping for? was Robin’s immediate thought.

Her phone rang. Strike was calling instead of texting. Trying to ignore the lurch in her stomach, Robin answered.

‘What about de Lion?’ Strike asked.

‘I – well, I’m not going to be able to pretend I’m casting a porn shoot, however much research I do. Sorry, but I’m just not going to be any good at it. If you think that’s the only way to find out where he is, it’ll have to be one of the others.’

She wondered whether Strike was thinking her prudish or inadequate. The truth was that Robin had a strong aversion to pornography. The rapist who’d wrecked her fallopian tubes had kept a stack of movies focusing on throttling and rape beneath the floorboards where he’d also hidden his gorilla mask.

‘I didn’t want to have to involve any of the others on de Lion,’ said Strike.

‘Well, then, shall we concentrate on finding out who the girl was, who posted the note through the door?’

‘Shit, I forgot to tell you,’ said Strike. ‘I know who she is. Her professional name’s Fyola Fay, her real name’s Fiona Freeman, and she lives in Wimbledon. I found a website dedicated to outing female porn stars. Real names, former or current professions, marital status, etc. No equivalent site for men, unfortunately.’

‘There’s a surprise,’ said Robin darkly. ‘Shall I try and talk to her?’

‘We need to think that through,’ said Strike. ‘I don’t doubt she’d be happier talking to you than me, but I’ve found out she lives with a porn director who looks like he lifts buses for weights and eats steroids for breakfast. A bit of covert surveillance on the house might be needed, so we make sure to catch her at home alone.

‘By the way, we seem to have picked up another Gateshead. Crazy-sounding Scottish woman who’s called twice now, asking me to meet her at the Golden Fleece.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Your guess is as good as mine,’ said Strike. ‘She sounds crazy enough to have mistaken me for Jason of the Argonauts.’

Robin laughed, then said,

‘There was something else I was going to tell you, actually,’ said Robin. ‘I know it might not be relevant at all, but I Googled Rita Linda while I was home and got a search result I want you to look at. It’s the only one I’ve found that would explain “it might be in the papers” and Wright “knowing what happened t—”’

‘Shit, got to go, Mrs TT’s active,’ said Strike.

He hung up.

Robin scrolled through her recent photos to find a screenshot she’d saved of a paragraph about ‘Reata Lindvall’, the woman whose name she’d found online while too drunk to read, outside the Bay Horse, and texted it to Strike.

She made herself a cup of tea, grabbed some biscuits, sat down at her laptop and headed back to the abandoned Instagram page of Sapphire Neagle, the missing schoolgirl who’d left online messages for both Calvin Osgood, the real music producer, and Oz, his online impersonator. Robin was trying to identify the school Sapphire had briefly attended before her disappearance. One pretty black girl seemed to have become close to Sapphire during her weeks at the school, judging by the many selfies the two had taken together, but Robin hadn’t yet managed to find the friend’s real name.

In spite of having something to occupy her mind and the matter-of-fact exchange of information she’d just had with her detective partner, Robin’s underlying anxiety hadn’t been assuaged. She still felt as though waiting for something to happen, something disruptive and cathartic, as a person feels in the change of air pressure the first intimations of a coming thunderstorm.

44

Unbeknownst to Robin, Strike, too, was having property-related problems. A good offer had been made on Ted and Joan’s house in St Mawes, but Greg thought they should hold out for more. What business it was of Greg’s, given that he didn’t own the place, was a question Strike hadn’t yet posed, in the interests of maintaining family harmony. He’d now endured two fraught phone calls on the subject with his sister. Both times, Strike had advocated accepting what was being offered. On the second occasion, Lucy had said distractedly,

‘Greg said you’d – oh, I just don’t know what to do.’

Strike didn’t know what Greg had said he’d do, but he could guess. His brother-in-law had either told Lucy the detective didn’t need the extra money Greg was hoping to squeeze out of the purchasers, or that Strike was too dim to realise there was extra money to be made. Strike knew Lucy’s inclination to hold out for more money wasn’t truly mercenary. In some confused way, she wanted to get the fullest possible value for what had meant so much to her, for so long.

It so happened that to Strike, too, that old house in St Mawes wasn’t just a prime bit of real estate, but he thought the offer that had been made was more than fair. Cheerless though it was to think of other people living in Ted and Joan’s house, was it really worth another few thousand pounds to scare off what sounded like a pleasant, local family, in favour of the second homers who might be able to afford more? And Strike was vaguely surprised to find in himself this very Cornish point of view, of which his oldest friend, Dave Polworth, would have heartily approved.

Meanwhile, Decima Mullins had requested a face-to-face update on the thirteenth of January, when, she said, she needed to come to London in any case. Strike, who suspected this trip might concern her failing restaurant, agreed to the meeting and, only too aware how little fresh information he had to give her, decided he was now justified in contacting Rupert’s ex-housemate, and the author of one of Fleetwood’s most pressing troubles, Zacharias Lorimer. He therefore emailed the young man for a second time, making vague intimations about a police inquiry, and strongly hinting that it was in Lorimer’s best interests to answer.

Shortly before one o’clock on a bitterly cold Friday, precisely one week before the proposed catch-up with Decima, Strike returned to Denmark Street to find Pat at her desk and the office otherwise deserted.

‘You’ve had a message from a man in Kenya, Zacharias Lorimer,’ she told Strike.

‘Yeah? Saying what?’

‘He can FaceTime you today at half past four. That’s half past one our time. His number’s by your keyboard.’

‘Great,’ said Strike, checking his watch and heading towards the kettle. ‘Want a coffee?’

‘Yeah, all right,’ said Pat gruffly. ‘And Dev was just in. He says Todd’s been on the Circle Line again and you’ll know what that means.’

‘Right,’ said Strike, ‘thanks.’

‘And I’ve found more Hussein Mohameds.’

‘How many are we up to now?’

‘A hundred and five.’

As Pat seemed in a reasonable mood, Strike indicated the fish tank.

‘Did you feel sorry for the black one?’ he asked, pointing at the faintly obscene fish with its knobbly head growth.

‘That’s an Oranda,’ she croaked, removing her e-cigarette to do so. ‘Fancy breed.’

‘Ah,’ said Strike.

‘I call it Cormoran. Got hair like yours.’

‘Hair?’

‘You know what I mean,’ said Pat.

Having made them both coffee, Strike headed into the inner office, holding the sandwich he’d bought en route. He’d had barely two mouthfuls when his mobile buzzed and he saw a text from Robin.

Update on Gretchen Schiff. I might be getting over-excited, but I think there’s something there. I haven’t mentioned murder, just said we’re investigating a theft, a man with a false name and a woman who looked like Sofia. I expected her to

Strike’s mobile rang: it was Lucy. Strike refused the call and continued reading Robin’s text.

say Sofia would never have had anything to do with robbery, but she went quiet. She’s just got back to me asking for more details. I’ve said I’m not comfortable giving those by phone, but would rather say it in person. I’ve sent her proof that I genuinely am who I say I am.

His mobile rang for a second time: Midge. This time, he answered.

‘Hi, what’s up?’

‘Fookin’ Kim!’

‘What about her?’

‘She’s just had a fookin’ go at me for sloppy note taking! I’m ex-fookin’ police myself, I don’t need her telling me how to keep fookin’ files! I’m telling you now, in case she comes running to you: I just told her to do one.’

‘Great,’ said Strike, far less sincerely than he’d said it five minutes previously, before remembering he was supposed to be ‘cutting Midge some slack’.

‘Look, I’m sorry, but it’s her fookin’ manner,’ said Midge furiously. ‘She’s not the fookin’ boss of—’

‘I’ll have a word with her,’ said Strike. ‘I can’t talk now, I’ve got to make a call.’

He rang off and returned to Robin’s text.

My impression is she’s worried and wants to know what I know. I’m waiting to hear whether she’s prepared to meet.

Strike put down his sandwich, about to respond, when his mobile rang for a third time: Kim. He picked up.

‘Hi,’ said Kim. ‘I’m sorry about this, but Midge and I have just had a bit of a run-in.’

‘I’ve heard,’ said Strike.

‘Look, I’m just a stickler for keeping files up to date. The thing is, we’re not getting anywhere with Plug, and digging into his mates looks like our best lead. Midge is a bit slapdash—’

‘I’ve never found her slapdash,’ said Strike, which was true, though he’d sometimes had reason to think her insubordinate, ‘and there are ways of communicating with colleagues that don’t give the impression you think you’re their superior.’

He glanced at the time on his computer screen. He had three minutes until his call with Zacharias Lorimer.

‘If she didn’t like my tone, I’m sorry,’ said Kim. ‘I suppose I just get hyper-focused on the job and want everyone firing on all cylinders.’

‘It’s down to Robin and me to decide whether all the subcontractors’ cylinders are firing.’

‘OK, point taken,’ said Kim, ‘I’ll apologise. To be completely honest with you, I was getting pissed off with her, because she’d been going on and on about that shitty story in the paper, you know, that thing with you and Candy—’

‘An apology should sort things,’ said Strike firmly, though he didn’t like what he’d just heard.

‘I’ll ring Midge now. Actually, if you’ve got a mo, I wanted to explain about that text I sent, Christmas Eve. I’ve been so embarrassed. You’re right above this guy Stu in my contacts, he’s been pestering me for a date since he found out I’ve split up with Ray—’

‘Doesn’t matter. I’ve got to go.’

He hung up, thoroughly disgruntled, wondering whether Midge had indeed been harping on that bloody news story. She had form on loudly expressed comments about his personal life; he well remembered her raging about ‘her with the fake tits’, after his extremely ill-advised liaison with Bijou Watkins had featured in Private Eye. Then, realising it was half past one exactly, he hastily brought up FaceTime and tapped in the number on the Post-it note Pat had placed beside his computer.

Zacharias Lorimer answered within a few rings, and Strike found himself facing a young man with thick, wavy blond hair, whose skin had the pink-brown, ham-like hue typical of Anglo-Saxons exposed to bright sunlight. He was sitting in what appeared to be an upmarket lodge of some kind, with wooden walls. Dazzling sunlight was falling through a window to his right. The corner of a large painting of a lioness and a well-stocked drinks tray were visible in the background, suggesting that Zacharias wasn’t slumming it in Kenya, though his khaki shirt gestured vaguely at some park ranger role.

‘Hi,’ he said, before Strike could speak. ‘You’re Cormoran, yah?’

‘That’s me,’ said Strike. ‘Thanks for getting back—’

‘OK,’ said Zacharias forcefully, ‘look, I don’t know where Rupert is, OK? I’ve told Decima I don’t know where he is, so that’s all I’ve got to say, OK?’

‘Yeah, that’s very clear,’ said Strike, who recognised a blow-hard when he met one, and changed his tactics accordingly. ‘Have you told the police that?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You left for Kenya before they got in touch, did you?’ said Strike.

‘What?’ said Zacharias, staring out of the screen with his slightly bloodshot eyes.

‘I assumed – but OK, if they haven’t tracked you down yet—’

‘What are you talking about? Why would the bloody police want to talk to me?’

‘Aside from the drug debt, you mean?’

Strike could tell Lorimer had been hoping Strike didn’t know anything about his dealings with Dredge, because his sunburned skin now turned blotchily red. He also deduced that Lorimer wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed, because after a long pause he said in a tone of poorly feigned confusion and defiance,

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Dredge. The dealer you stiffed for a kilo of Colombia’s finest.’

‘I don’t—’

‘I’m not arsed one way or another about the coke,’ said Strike, ‘but if you’d rather talk to the police than me, I’ll let you go.’

He reached out a hand, as though to close FaceTime, and Zacharias said,

‘Hang on!’

Strike withdrew his hand.

‘Nobody’s been in touch with me, except you, OK?’ said Zacharias, now looking panicky.

‘Look,’ said the detective, with a carefully calculated air of circumspection, ‘I only want information on Rupert. If the police think I’m messing with their investigation, or warning suspects—’

‘What d’you mean, “suspects”? Why – suspected of what?’

‘When did you leave for Kenya?’

‘Why?’

‘Because if you left after the murder was all over the British news, I can’t be accused of giving you details you already knew.’

‘I – what?’ said Zacharias, clearly thrown. ‘Wait – is this that silver shop thing?’

‘How did you know that?’ said Strike sharply, as though Zacharias had suspicious inside knowledge.

‘Because Decima said something about it, but that’s bloody ridiculous, I looked it all up online and the police found out it was some thief—’

‘There’ve been developments since then, but I probably shouldn’t – thanks for your time, anyway.’

Once again, Strike stretched out his hand to close the window.

‘Hang on! They – what? They actually think that body was Rupert? That’s just – that’s bullshit!’ said Zacharias, now looking thoroughly panicked.

‘D’you have a concrete reason for thinking that?’ asked Strike. ‘Have you been in touch with him since the body was found?’

‘No, but that doesn’t – it can’t have been him!’

‘Were you aware Rupert had an antique silver ship he wanted to dispose of?’

‘No,’ said Zacharias, looking genuinely confused.

‘He stole it because he needed cash to get Dredge off his back, after you fucked off to Kenya.’

‘I never told him to nick any bloody silver ship!’ said Zacharias, now turning slowly purple. ‘If he did that, it’s on him!’

He reached out of shot for a glass of what might have been water or gin, and took a large swig.

‘So it’s news to you Rupert might’ve got his head bashed in, because you don’t pay your debts?’

‘I don’t even know who this Dredge—’

‘Spare me the bullshit,’ said Strike. ‘We both know you’re not in Kenya for the scenery. When did you last hear from Rupert?’

‘Not since we moved out of our house.’

‘Any idea where he might’ve gone, if he wasn’t the body in the silver vault?’

‘I dunno – back to Switzerland, maybe, gone to be a ski instructor or something? He speaks German and Italian. It’s what I’d’ve done, if I were him.’

‘Probably not much demand for ski instructors in May, which is the last definite sighting of Rupert,’ said Strike.

‘He could’ve stayed with his aunt and uncle in Zurich, before the season started.’

‘His aunt says Rupert’s in New York.’

‘Well, then, he probably is.’

‘Did he ever talk to you about getting a job in New York?’

‘No, not that I can remember – look, if he’s run off somewhere, it’s nothing to do with me, OK?’ said Lorimer. ‘I never made him steal anything! He was all over the fucking place, in that fucked-up relationship – she’s nearly forty, that Longcaster woman! I think he had a fucking Oedipiddle complex, or something.’

‘Oedipiddle complex?’

‘Yeah, you know, when you want to screw your mother,’ said Zacharias. ‘I’m telling you, he was going weird in the head before I left. Ripping up his clothes and shit.’

‘What d’you mean, ripping—?’

‘Tish not told you about that?’ said Zacharias, with a sneer.

‘This is your girlfriend?’

‘Ex-girlfriend. She probably knows where he is, go ask her, they were cosying up by the end.’

‘They were romantically involved?’

‘No,’ said Zacharias, scowling, but Strike suspected a different kind of betrayal; perhaps that the pair had bonded over mutual fear of Dredge’s displaced revenge.

‘What’s Tish’s surname?’

‘Benton, Tish Benton,’ said Zacharias with a promptitude that suggested a vengeful hope that Strike would redirect his unnerving attention towards his ex.

‘Have you got a number for her?’

‘Not a current one.’

‘Any idea where she’s living?’

‘No,’ said Zacharias. ‘Try her parents, they’re in Hampshire.’

Strike made a note, then said,

‘What was that about Rupert ripping up his clothes?’

‘Not his clothes,’ said Zacharias, as though Strike were the one who’d said it, not him, ‘just this stupid bloody lucky T-shirt he used to wear all the time. He tore it up. Like a – you know – gesture, I s’pose. Get more sympathy off Tish,’ he sneered.

‘When did Rupert tear up his T-shirt?’

‘I don’t know, not long before I left…’

Zacharias glanced at something out of the frame of the shot, possibly an approaching employer, because he next said,

‘I’m going to have to go, I’ve got work to do.’

‘What are you up to, over there?’ asked Strike.

‘Eco-lodge tourism stuff,’ said Zacharias dourly.

It was, Strike thought, the twenty-first century equivalent of shunting off the unsatisfactory son to the colonies. Possibly the ease with which Zacharias’s family had provided him with a comfortable sinecure accounted for the throwaway suggestion that Rupert Fleetwood might have disappeared to the Alps to become a ski instructor.

‘Can I ask one last question?’ said Strike.

‘What?’ said Zacharias ungraciously.

‘Did either you or Rupert know a man called Osgood, or Oz?’

‘No,’ said Zacharias.

‘Ever hear Rupert mention anyone of that name?’

‘No,’ said Zacharias again.

Strike heard a door open offscreen.

‘I’ve got to go,’ said Zacharias hurriedly. He leaned forwards, pressed a button, and disappeared.

The detective sat back in his chair, frowning at the blank screen, then looked down at his notes.

He doubted this information would crack the case, and he needed some kind of breakthrough, because the expense of the expanding investigation was growing steadily higher. There was still a trip to Scotland and Ironbridge to come, and Strike hadn’t forgotten that Decima’s restaurant appeared to be in trouble. Tearing the page out of his notebook, he got to his feet, unfolded the wooden wings over the cork noticeboard and pinned these sparse notes beneath the picture of Rupert Fleetwood.

There’d been a new addition to the board since he last viewed it, clearly put there by Robin when she’d passed through the office. This was a printout of the article Robin had found online, screenshotted and already sent to Strike. It related to a Swedish woman called Reata Lindvall, who’d been murdered alongside her six-year-old daughter in Belgium, in 1998. Her ex-lover had been found guilty of the crimes and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Strike had already responded to Robin’s text about Lindvall with a non-committal ‘worth bearing in mind’, but he didn’t want to clutter up the board with things that, in his view, had only remote speculative value. All their current candidates for William Wright had been children when Lindvall had been murdered and none had any known connection to Belgium. Had any other detective at the agency pinned the paragraph there, he’d have taken it straight down again, but as it was Robin’s, he left it there, for now.

Taking a step backwards, coffee in hand, Strike examined the pattern most of the notes made, set in columns beneath their possible Wrights. Strike had no hunches about any of them, no underlying certainty that there was their man; it seemed eminently likely, still, that William Wright had been somebody else entirely.

He returned to his desk, picked up his mobile, and called Robin. She answered, and he could hear that she was driving.

‘Where are you?’

‘Mrs Two-Times is in Chelsea,’ said Robin.

‘Well, I just wanted to say, very good work on Schiff. If she—’

‘Shit!’

‘What’s the matter?’

‘It’s the clutch on this bloody hire car, it keeps sticking.’

‘Have you had a look for a new Land Rover yet?’

‘Yes, but there’s nothing I can realistically afford, not even if the business helps,’ said Robin, who sounded harried. ‘Sorry, Strike, I’m going to have to concentrate, the traffic’s bad and this bloody clutch—’

‘OK, speak lat—’

Robin hung up.

Strike sat back down at his computer and reached for his now cold coffee and his vape pen, thinking how impractical it was for the business to keep hiring cars for Robin. Her Land Rover was associated in his mind with many significant journeys, with jokes, shared food and long conversations. Some of their best times together had been in that draughty old car, with the tin in the glove compartment for him to use as an ashtray and its increasingly persistent rattle…

Strike reached yet again for his mobile and called Lucy.

‘Just saw I missed you earlier.’

‘Oh, I’m so glad you called back,’ said his sister, sounding just as stressed as she had the last two times they’d spoken. ‘It’s the house. Greg’s insisting we hold out for more, but I’ve just heard from the estate agent. The Smiths definitely can’t go any higher—’

‘You know, I’ve been thinking,’ said Strike dishonestly, ‘about what Ted and Joan would’ve wanted.’

‘Greg says they’ll have wanted us to get the most we can,’ said Lucy.

I’ll bet he fucking does.

‘You know, for the boys’ future,’ said Lucy quickly, ‘and for us, I suppose.’

‘D’you honestly think they’d have cared more about the money than who moved in?’ asked Strike. ‘I know we’ll be able to flog it to some London lot who want a second home—’

‘They wouldn’t have wanted that,’ said Lucy. ‘No, they’d have wanted locals.’

‘Well, exactly,’ said Strike. ‘How old did you say the Smiths’ kids are?’

‘Six and eight, I think.’

‘It’d be like Ted, Joan and us all over again,’ said Strike shamelessly.

Lucy made a small noise he suspected indicated tears.

‘Look, it’s up to you,’ he said. ‘If you’d rather hold out for more money—’

‘No, you’re right, you’re absolutely right,’ said Lucy, her voice breaking. ‘That is what they’d have wanted, for it to stay a proper family home. I’ve been thinking that all along, but Greg – no, that’s made up my mind. I want the Smiths to have it.’

‘Well, I agree,’ said Strike. ‘I think Ted and Joan would’ve been pleased. They weren’t mercenary people.’

‘No,’ said Lucy, and she blew her nose. ‘You’re right, they weren’t. Thanks, Stick, this is honestly such a weight off my mind, I’ve been really stressing about it. How are you, any—?’

‘I’m great. Sorry, Luce, I’m going to have to go, I’m on a job. Keep me posted on the Smiths.’

He hung up. With the money from the sale of the Cornwall house in his account, he’d not only be free of the burden of keeping an eye on the place at a distance of nearly three hundred miles, he’d also be able to offer Robin a personal loan to buy a new Land Rover. His mood somewhat improved, he set to work to try and find contact details for Tish Benton.

45

Robin was relieved to have one project to focus on at the moment, a place to concentrate her energies, where she couldn’t keep fretting about personal matters: trying to persuade Gretchen Schiff, the former flatmate of Sofia Medina, to meet her in person.

Medina’s OnlyFans page had disappeared from the internet, presumably at the behest of her family, so Robin was unable to see any of the men who might have been asking her for real world contact. Gretchen was therefore her best hope of further information on Sofia. There’d been long lulls between Robin’s messages and Gretchen’s responses, but Robin was becoming increasingly convinced that there was, as she’d put it to Strike, ‘something there’. While Gretchen’s suspicion and unwillingness to engage might be explained by the traumatic aftermath of learning that her flatmate had been murdered, the young woman still hadn’t pushed back on the idea that Sofia could have been involved in a robbery, and this omission was as suggestive as Gretchen’s constant probing to find out more about the man with the fake name Robin was investigating.

Finally, to Robin’s delight, the student agreed to meet her on Thursday, choosing the Montagu Pyke, a Wetherspoons pub, as the venue for the interview.

Heavy rain was falling on the day of their lunchtime rendezvous. Robin was on high alert walking to the pub, glancing back regularly and taking all possible counter-surveillance measures, including crossing the road unexpectedly to see whether anyone plunged into the traffic after her, but was confident she hadn’t been followed.

She was glad to get out of the rain, but the pub, she thought as she entered it, wasn’t exactly what you’d call cosy or intimate. It had once been a famous music venue, and was large enough to fit a few hundred people, with a very high, arched ceiling and maroon walls, on which hung large posters of acts that had once appeared here, including The Who, Jimi Hendrix and – Robin’s eyes were drawn to the huge picture instantly – the Deadbeats, Strike’s father’s band, with the long-haired Jonny Rokeby to the fore in his bell-bottom jeans and a leather jacket worn open over a bare chest. Robin waited for a group of young people who looked very hungover to order pitchers of cocktails, bought herself a coffee, then took a table where she had a clear view of the entrance.

Robin recognised Gretchen as soon as she walked into the pub, folding up a wet umbrella as she came. She was a curvy girl with thick, naturally golden hair that fell to her shoulders, sallow skin and a pair of clear green eyes. She wore no make-up and her fleece added inches to a very large bust.

Gretchen was accompanied by a tall, stringy, intense-looking young man whose hair was tied up in a bun and who sported a goatee and round-rimmed glasses. They both bought beers, and when Gretchen spotted Robin, who’d sent the student her photograph, she muttered something to the young man, and the pair headed over to her.

‘Hi,’ said Robin, as they reached her, smiling as she held out a hand, which Gretchen shook, though she didn’t return the smile. The young man ignored Robin’s outstretched hand when it was offered to him.

‘You’re Robin?’ said Gretchen.

‘That’s me.’

Gretchen’s English, as Robin had known from their only phone call, was virtually accent-less, though she was Austrian.

‘This is my boyfriend, Max.’

‘Hi, Max,’ said Robin, as the couple sat down opposite her. ‘Are you at the University of West London as well?’

‘Yeah.’

‘What are you studying?’

‘Digital Marketing,’ said Max. He had the air of a man determined not to give out more information than was strictly necessary.

‘Would either of you like anything to eat?’ asked Robin, pushing the menu towards them, but both shook their heads. Max hadn’t taken his messenger bag off his shoulder.

‘Well, as I’ve already explained to you, Gretchen, our agency’s investigating a robbery,’ said Robin.

‘Vy are you investigating it?’ said Max. ‘Vy not the police?’

‘The police are investigating as well,’ said Robin.

It might be true, Robin thought. Somebody at the Met might have gone back to St George’s Avenue and asked Daz and Mandy for more details about the people who’d entered Wright’s room and left carrying suitcases.

‘But our client doesn’t think they’re taking it seriously enough, because the stolen objects weren’t very valuable,’ Robin went on.

This, too, could be true: all Robin knew for certain had been in William Wright’s room were his weights and the suit and glasses he’d worn to work at Ramsay Silver.

‘So vy do you vant to know about Sofia?’ asked Max, whose accent was far stronger than his girlfriend’s.

‘A girl was seen entering and leaving the burgled room on Friday the seventeenth of June. She had long black hair and was wearing a very similar outfit to the one Sofia was wearing when she was found. Then a man with dark, curly hair entered the room, in the early hours of the following morning. We think the pair of them then drove off together in a silver car.’

At the mention of the curly haired man, Max’s face lost expression, and Gretchen reached suddenly for her beer bottle and took a clumsy gulp.

‘But obviously,’ Robin said, masking the thrill of excitement that had just passed through her, ‘lots of women have long black hair and wear pink tops. It’s just that the sighting of a girl matching Sofia’s description in those unusual circumstances, just twenty-four hours before Sofia was found dead, made us wonder whether there was a connection.’

The pause that followed ought, Robin thought, to have been full of protestations – ‘Sofia would never have committed burglary’, ‘it can’t have been her’, ‘you’ve got the wrong person’ – but the two students sat frozen, without looking at each other. Even so, Robin could almost see the invisible communications flying between them. Now what? Just say something. Anything.

‘But as you say,’ said Max at last, ‘der are lots of vimmin who look like det, vid long hair and zo on. And I don’t tink she’d be involved in somezing like det,’ he added, turning in rather artificial fashion to look at his girlfriend. ‘Vould she?’

‘No,’ said Gretchen. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Did you know Sofia well, Gretchen?’ asked Robin.

‘Yes,’ said Gretchen, but she added quickly, ‘only because we shared a flat. I advertised on the college noticeboard and she applied. We had different friends.’

‘Did you like her?’ asked Robin.

‘Vy does it matter if Gretchen liked her?’ said Max superciliously.

Ignoring him, Robin addressed Gretchen again.

‘Did any of her male friends have dark, curly—?’

‘No,’ said Gretchen, too quickly.

Yes, thought Robin, it was definitely the dark, curly haired man who had the couple worried.

‘But you weren’t in the same friendship group,’ said Robin, ‘so you might not have known, if she was involved with someone like that?’

‘No,’ said Gretchen, clearly striving for a casual tone. ‘Maybe not.’

‘I read in the papers about Sofia’s OnlyFans account. You were concerned she was making it too easy for men to find out where she was—’

‘That wasn’t me,’ said Gretchen quickly. ‘Somebody else said that, to the papers. It wasn’t me.’

‘Vot hass det got to do vid der robbery, an OnlyFans account?’ demanded Max. ‘Dere’s nothing illegal, posting your own nudes. Det’s not a crime.’

‘No, of course it isn’t,’ said Robin, and, addressing Gretchen again, she asked,

‘Did you ever hear Sofia mention a man called William? William Wright?’

‘No, I never heard her talk about a William,’ said Gretchen.

‘Villiam, no, I never heard her talk about, eider,’ said Max.

‘What did you think of Sofia, Max?’ Robin asked. If he wanted to talk, let him talk.

‘I only knew her because of dem sharing a flat,’ he said, but he couldn’t resist adding, ‘she vos a party girl.’

‘Sag das nicht,’ muttered Gretchen.

‘Der’s nothing wrong vid being a party girl,’ Max told his girlfriend. ‘She vos det type, det’s all. She showed me her – vot is it? Requisiten,’ he said to Gretchen. ‘Der first time I came to der flat. Der vigs and dat.’

When Robin looked politely enquiring, Gretchen muttered,

‘He means, her props.’

‘Props?’ said Robin blankly, and then she realised what was meant, and said, ‘Oh, for pictures to post online?’

‘Ja,’ said Max. ‘Sex toys and vigs and so on.’

‘Right,’ said Robin. She turned to Gretchen. ‘I suppose the police asked you about all of this?’

‘Yes,’ said Gretchen.

‘And about Sofia’s love life?’

‘Yes,’ said Gretchen reluctantly. ‘She was popular.’

‘She vos always viz men,’ said Max. ‘Everybody knows det.’

‘Did she have a particular boyfriend?’

‘Not – no,’ said Gretchen. ‘I don’t think so.’

Had Gretchen been this shifty with the police, or had her halting speech been put down to shock, or faulty English?

‘Did Sofia ever tell either of you she felt threatened, or worried, by any of the men who visited her OnlyFans site?’ Robin asked.

‘She voss enjoying the attention. She vossn’t vurried,’ said Max.

‘So you never saw Sofia with a man with dark, curly hair?’ Robin asked Gretchen, but Max answered for her again.

‘Gretchen has already said no. She’s tolt the police everything she knows.’

‘I don’t know everyone Sofia met,’ said Gretchen. ‘I told the police so. It’s like Max says. There were lots of different men.’

‘Did you ever know her to steal anyth—?’

‘No,’ said Gretchen.

‘Are you sure?’ said Robin.

‘She could… forget to return things,’ said Gretchen uncertainly, ‘but that’s not like robbing somebody’s flat.’

As friendliness was getting Robin nowhere, she decided a change of tone was warranted.

‘Why did you agree to meet me, Gretchen?’ she asked, no longer smiling.

‘Because – I wanted to know what it was all about,’ said Gretchen.

Robin could hear the strain in her voice. She could also tell that Max was itching to spirit his girlfriend away from this dangerous woman, to regroup, to think out their next steps. Robin decided a bluff was the only way to go.

‘Gretchen, our agency’s got good police contacts. The police already know Sofia was hanging around with a man who had dark, curly hair. That’s how we connected Sofia with the pair who robbed the flat in Newham. I think you know who that man is, and I think you know Sofia was with him, the weekend she was killed.’

‘How could Gretchen know who Sofia vos vid?’ said Max angrily. ‘She vosn’t dere.’ He stood up. ‘Lass uns gehen,’ he said to his girlfriend.

Gretchen half-rose.

‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to inform the police I believe you’ve deliberately withheld information,’ said Robin.

Gretchen fell back into her chair as though her legs wouldn’t support her weight. Max stooped to hiss in his girlfriend’s ear.

‘Du solltest mit einem Anwalt reden!’

Robin, who’d taken three years of German at school, seemed to remember the word ‘Anwalt’ cropping up while learning the names of various professions. At her boyfriend’s words, Gretchen’s face crumpled. Hiding it in her hands, she began to sob.

‘Ich hätte es sagen sollen!’

‘Dann geh zurück zur Polizei!’ said Max angrily, and Robin deduced from the last word that Max was telling his girlfriend that the police should receive any information she might have, rather than Robin.

‘You don’t have to tell me what you know,’ said Robin, ‘but you should tell the police, if you know anything about that man.’ And now Robin changed tack again, becoming reassuring. ‘I’m sure you won’t be in any trouble. People forget things, and then their memory gets jogged…’

Gretchen was still crying. Max sat down again, putting a tentative hand on her back, muttering in German. The girl shook her head, her shoulders shaking, her face still hidden. Four young people at a nearby table, who were sharing a jug of some purple liquid, were staring over at the scene. Robin cast a cold look at them and they turned hastily back to their pitcher of cocktails.

‘Tell me more about Sofia,’ Robin said, judging it best to leave the subject of the curly haired man for now.

Gretchen looked up. Her tear-stained, woeful face looked childish now. She wiped her nose on the cuff of her fleece.

‘She vos… what Max said,’ she whispered.

‘A party girl?’ said Robin gently. ‘Well, he’s right, there’s no harm in that, is there?’

Still rubbing his girlfriend’s back, Max said through clenched lips,

‘Sag nichts anderes. Sie hat keine Autorität.’

‘I might not be a policewoman,’ said Robin, ‘but we work closely with the police, and continuing to hide what you know—’

‘She vonted a sugar daddy,’ blurted Gretchen.

Robin wouldn’t have needed to know any German at all to recognise that Max had just sworn under his breath. An argument now broke out in their native language, Max speaking in an angry whisper, Gretchen tearful, her voice rising higher and higher in pitch. Several words recurred: Polizei, Anwalt and Lüge, the last of which Robin was certain meant ‘lie’.

‘Weil die Polizei es bereits weiß!’ Gretchen threw at her boyfriend at last, and appealing to Robin, she said, ‘They know already, the police, yes? They know she knew that man viz the curly hair?’

In the stress of the situation, her flawless English accent was deteriorating.

‘They do, yes,’ said Robin. And if they didn’t listen when we told them he was at Wright’s house, they will now.

‘You see?’ said Gretchen desperately to her boyfriend. ‘Dey already know!’

‘Tell me about this man,’ said Robin. ‘Where did Sofia meet him?’

‘On… on OnlyFans,’ said Gretchen.

Robin took her notebook out of her bag. Both her interviewees looked frightened at the sight of it, but they were in too deep, now, to run.

‘How long were they together?’

‘Only… a month or something, before she died. She said she loved him.’

‘It vosn’t luff,’ said Max impatiently. ‘She liked his money.’

‘He’s rich,’ Gretchen told Robin. ‘He gave her a ruby necklace… real rubies…’

‘Are you sure they were real?’ asked Robin, who was making notes.

‘Yes, because she took dem to a jeweller, and he said they were real.’

‘Was she was wearing the necklace, the last time you saw her?’

‘She wore it all the time,’ said Gretchen, as Robin scribbled. There’d been no mention of a ruby necklace on the body found on the North Wessex Downs.

‘Did you ever meet him, Gretchen?’

‘No, I didn’t vant her bringing him to the flat, I didn’t want any men from OnlyFans at the flat. She said he vos in the music business—’

A second surge of excitement shot through Robin.

‘—but he did bad things when he vos young.’

‘What sort of bad things?’

‘I don’t know. Sofia thought that made him more…’

‘Exciting?’ suggested Robin, and Gretchen nodded before saying miserably,

‘And she did have him at our flat and I knew, because I saw him leaving the building, when I was coming home. I saw him in the distance, a man like – like you said, with dark, curly hair, and he vos older, and I knew it was him. And I said, “you’ve had O – you’ve had him here, haven’t you?”’

Robin decided to ignore the ‘O’ for the present, but before she could ask her next question, Gretchen started to cry again.

‘I didn’t vont her family to know she was with a married man! They’re religious, they’re quite old! That’s why she wanted to come to the UK to study, to get away from dem! She was… innocent. She vos,’ she told her angry boyfriend, who’d opened his mouth to speak again. ‘She did all dese things, vit the pictures online, but she was… naive. Childish. She vonted to liff in a fantasy… O – he told her not to tell anyone she was with him, because he was married, and he had a kid, but she told me. She was excited about it all, she couldn’t keep it to herself. She vonted to show me the necklace…’

‘Was Sofia with him, the weekend she was killed?’ Robin asked again.

‘I don’t know,’ said Gretchen tearfully, ‘but I sink zo. She said she was going to be going somewhere special. He travelled a lot, so I thought maybe they were going abroad, but she was giggling about it, as if it was… naughty, or something, so then I thought maybe he was going to take her to his house, because his vife was going to be away. I didn’t like it, I didn’t think she should… not viz a married man and a father, it wasn’t right.’

‘Did Sofia tell you where the man lived?’

‘She said he had a big house in the country, with a swimming pool.’

‘Can you remember a county, a town?’

Gretchen shook her head.

Robin laid down her pen.

‘I can tell you’re a good person, Gretchen,’ she said. ‘You’ve got morals. You were worried about what Sofia was up to with that man, and you clearly felt protective of her.’

Gretchen closed her clear green eyes, as though she couldn’t bear to look at Robin.

‘And that’s why I know something big must have stopped you telling the police about this man,’ Robin continued.

‘Ja, I already told you – her family—’

‘I’m afraid I don’t believe it’s because you wanted to protect her parents from knowing she was having an affair with a married man,’ said Robin firmly. ‘They already knew she’d been posting nudes online for money. Anyway, if he’s the one who murdered their daughter, do you honestly think they wouldn’t want him caught?’

Gretchen started to cry again.

‘Are you scared of him?’ said Robin. ‘Are you afraid he’ll do something to you, if you talk about him?’

Max was now staring up at the Deadbeats’ poster. He’d stopped trying to control the interview; the thing he’d tried to prevent had already happened.

‘Gretchen,’ said Robin, dropping her voice, ‘has this man got pictures of you, too?’

A tiny negative jerk of the head was the only response, but Gretchen’s sobs increased.

‘Has he?’ said Robin quietly, and this time, Gretchen nodded.

‘S-Sofia – he offered her a lot for some pictures of the two of us – I… I vos drunk. And next day… I vonted her to tell him to delete them, but I know he’s still got them…’

‘The best thing you can do, right now, is tell me that man’s name, and anything else you can remember about him,’ said Robin.

‘But der pictures will get in der papers,’ sobbed Gretchen.

‘If you’re a witness, there are ways of protecting you—’

‘People vill know it vos me, my family, people at college—’

‘Future employers,’ interjected Max angrily.

‘People will tink I do things like det all the time, I don’t, I never did, I vos drunk and she said I could haff half the money…’

‘You’d rather Sofia’s killer got away with it, would you?’ said Robin in a low voice. ‘You’d rather this man stays free to murder other girls? Or d’you really think Sofia got what she deserved, for being silly, and liking ruby necklaces?’

‘No!’ squealed Gretchen. ‘I liked her! She was funny and she vos… she vos sweet…’

‘Then tell me everything you know about this man,’ said Robin firmly.

‘She didn’t tell me anything except his job, and that he had a vife.’

‘And his name?’ said Robin.

‘It vossn’t his real name,’ said Max contemptuously. ‘He wouldn’t use det.’

But Gretchen, who had mingled snot and tears dripping from her chin, whispered:

‘Osgood. Calvin Osgood, but she called him Oz.’

Max heaved a large sigh, put his arm around his girlfriend’s shoulders and said,

‘Und jetzt rufen wir einen Anwalt an.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, closing her notebook. ‘I think calling a lawyer’s a very good idea.’

46

‘Well, I sure as hell haven’t got anything to beat what you got yesterday,’ said Strike, when Robin arrived at the office at eleven o’clock the following morning. They were to be lunching with Decima Mullins at Quo Vadis in Dean Street and Strike had suggested a quick in-person catch-up before meeting the client, not because there was much to say that hadn’t already been communicated by text, email and phone, but because he was continuing to seize every opportunity for private chats with his partner.

It was another chilly day, the sky smoke grey, and Robin was wearing a forest green knitted dress and black boots appropriate to both the chilly weather and their client’s choice of restaurant. Strike, who was wearing the only suit that currently fitted him after over a year of intermittent dieting, refrained from telling Robin she looked good. All of that could wait for the Lake District hotel: until then, he thought it best to maintain a strict professionalism.

‘So, what d’you reckon are the odds that Oz and Medina cleared out Wright’s flat?’

‘Getting much, much higher,’ said Robin, trying to sound upbeat.

The triumph she’d felt in the immediate aftermath of her interview with Gretchen and Max had become tinged with anxiety overnight. Once again, she and Strike were in possession of information the police should be given. Strike had said he’d tell Wardle, leaving Robin praying once again that her boyfriend wouldn’t hear where the intelligence had come from, but she had the feeling it was only a matter of time, now, before Murphy realised what they were really up to.

‘But we still haven’t got the full picture, have we?’ Robin said. ‘If it was Oz who cleared out Wright’s flat, why involve Medina at all? Why not empty it himself? Why did it have to be done in two batches; why go back there at all, after Wright was dead?’

‘I had a thought about that,’ said Strike, ‘and if I’m right, it’s because Oz fucked up.’

‘How?’

‘I think Medina was supposed to take anything in the room that might’ve led to an ID of Wright, but there was something in there she couldn’t lift. So Oz goes back for it, then drops it on the stairs, unable to hold it. Wright bought weights after moving in, remember? And unless he’d visited Wright in the lead-up to Wright’s murder, Oz wouldn’t have known they were there.’

‘But why would it matter if the weights were left?’ said Robin. ‘The police already had Wright’s DNA, they couldn’t stop them matching it.’

‘That’s exactly where my speculation stops. I don’t know why it would be urgent to take the weights, but I can’t think of much else a fairly small woman wouldn’t’ve been able to carry, and which Oz himself struggled to lift. I don’t think Oz was supposed to have gone anywhere near Wright’s room, but he had to – and unfortunately for him, Mandy was awake at five a.m.’

‘I still can’t see why he needed Sofia Medina,’ said Robin. ‘She was a liability; she blabbed to her flatmate. And as for being bait, she can’t have been the girlfriend Wright thought was coming to live with him.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because the timescale doesn’t fit,’ said Robin. ‘Gretchen says Sofia only knew Oz for about a month. Sofia might’ve been naive, but I can’t see letting herself get pimped out to a second man, when what she wanted was Oz himself – or his rubies and his jet set lifestyle. Plus, Wright would’ve had to be even worse than naive, agreeing to a girl moving in with him almost as soon as she met him, when he knew people were after him.’

‘He wouldn’t be the first man to prefer not to look a very attractive gift horse in the mouth,’ said Strike, with a painful recollection of Bijou Watkins naked, ‘but yeah, you’re right, the time frame doesn’t seem to fit. Well, if the police start investigating Oz and Medina, we might be able to pick up some crumbs.’

‘I’m still trying to get information on that missing girl who messaged Oz online,’ said Robin. ‘Sapphire Neagle. I’ve found her Instagram account and I’ve identified a friend who might be helpful. If I can only find out where she goes to school, I could try and speak to the friend.’

‘Any new information would help, if you can get it,’ said Strike, now directing his attention to the clump of notes about Wright, and Ramsay Silver, grouped together at the bottom of the board, ‘because I’m damned if I can see how all this fits together and some of it has to be irrelevant. We’ve got to find a way of narrowing down all the Hussein Mohameds, as well, because we haven’t got the manpower to bang on over a hundred doors on the off-chance. Meanwhile, Midge says Jim Todd’s made two more calls from telephone boxes and has been riding round the Circle Line without going anywhere again.’

‘I’m still interested in that text Pamela Bullen got, the day of the robbery, which was followed by her dashing out of the shop without locking up.’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, scratching his chin, ‘but the police are bound to have checked that out and been satisfied with whatever she told them.’

‘Still—’

‘I agree, I’d like that cleared up, too, but she’s already lied to you and I can’t see her coming clean now. I’ve been having a look into John Auclair, that silver collector who was there when the body was discovered, but we’re not going to be able to speak to him any time soon, because—’

‘—he’s in Monaco,’ said Robin. ‘I know, I saw it online. Nice yacht.’

Strike took a sip of his tea as he turned away from the board to face Robin.

‘Want to run through the latest info on our four current candidates for William Wright?’

‘OK,’ said Robin.

‘Taking the last first,’ said Strike, gesturing to the picture of Dick de Lion, with his sculpted abs and his orange skin, ‘I’ve had no luck on his real name, but I’ve been digging on Lord Oliver Branfoot. According to Fergus Robertson, rumours have been flying around journalistic circles about Branfoot for years.’

‘What kind of rumours?’

‘The word in tabloid circles is, Branfoot swings both ways. Robertson told me Branfoot stepped down as an MP because there was an incident involving a young male intern. Apparently the intern was given a hefty pay-off, because he’s refused to talk to the press and has kept shtum ever since. Branfoot resigned on the pretext that his wife was ill, and since then he’s concentrated on his think tank and charitable work. He’s got a particular interest in troubled young men, projects for juvenile offenders and so on, and Robertson doesn’t think that’s entirely altruistic.

‘I didn’t tell Robertson why we’re interested in Branfoot, but he’s not stupid, he’s noticed Branfoot taking an unusual interest in the private detective business lately. I asked him to keep an ear out, and promised him the inside scoop if we get anything. If – big if, but for the sake of argument – Branfoot had anything to do with the body and if – even bigger if – that cipher note’s to be believed, and the body was Dick de Lion, we might have a motive. De Lion was blackmailing Branfoot, or was refusing to be bought off like the intern, so Branfoot decided to get rid of him. But to say we’ve got no concrete evidence that’s what happened is the understatement of the year.’

‘But that theory would explain what Shanker told you,’ said Robin.

‘It would,’ agreed Strike, ‘which is why I asked Robertson whether Branfoot’s a Freemason. He doesn’t know, but he sounded excited by the question, so I’m hoping he’ll do a bit of nosing around for us. On the other hand,’ said Strike, turning to look up at the board again, ‘we’ve got our road trip coming up. If we hear something that suggests it was Semple or Powell in the vault, Branfoot becomes irrelevant.’

Robin, who’d experienced another of her inconvenient inner tremors at the thought of that Lake District hotel, made an effort to sound matter of fact as she said, ‘Jade Semple first, then?’

There was a knock on the dividing door, which opened immediately.

Oh, not again, thought Robin, as Kim Cochran appeared, holding a fold-up chair.

‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, ‘I didn’t think you were in this morning, Robin.’ She turned, beaming, to Strike. ‘I think you’ll like this.’

‘What?’ asked Strike, his tone as unwelcoming as Robin could have wished.

‘I’ve got intel on the three men who went into the shop to murder Wright, and’ – Kim held up a large manila envelope – ‘I’ve got you pictures of the body.’

47

‘I’ve been working on this guy I know for weeks, and he finally came across last night,’ said Kim triumphantly, unfolding her chair and sitting down while Robin quietly burned with resentment. It wasn’t just that Kim was about to outshine her (though it was, definitely, partly that): Kim’s offhand tone when speaking to Robin, and the broad smile she saved for Strike, rankled.

‘OK,’ said Kim, opening the manila envelope, ‘needless to say, if anyone finds out the guy gave me copies of these—’

‘They won’t,’ said Strike, holding out a hand. Although there were three different pictures, Kim handed the lot to Strike, and Robin’s resentment burned a little hotter.

‘Jesus,’ said Strike. After examining the first picture, he slid it across the table to his partner.

The gouged-out eyes were dark and terrifying hollows. Dried blood, like lipstick applied by a drunk, coated the mouth from which the teeth had been torn. One ear had been sliced off; the other wound was still covered by the long dark hair. The masonic sash – black and red, with gold embroidery that shone in the flash of the camera – lay across a chest that was muscled and hairless, and had an artificial tan, which hadn’t been properly applied: there were patches of white under the arms. However, the falsely healthy skin tone couldn’t conceal the large patches of bluish-purple discolouration, which weren’t bruises, but signs of livor mortis. His penis had been cut off, too, leaving another gaping, blackened wound. The arms ended in stumps where the hands should have been: Robin could see bone and tendons, and she wondered, feeling slightly queasy, what had become of the dismembered parts of the body. Shoved into bags, or pockets?

She’d expressed surprise to Strike that the press hadn’t been more interested in what had been done to this unidentified man, once they realised he was a criminal. Now she felt a slight stirring of guilt that she, too, had stopped thinking of him as a human being as the case had proceeded. The body in the vault – such a strange, contrived scene, with the sash and the silver, the unlikelihood of it all, the theatricality – had reduced the corpse almost to a waxwork figure in her mind, the centrepiece of a strange conundrum.

‘The back view,’ said Strike, sliding another picture across the desk to Robin.

She’d been imagining the hallmark carved into the dead man’s back to be a small thing. On the contrary, the Salem cross ran from the nape of the neck to the cleft in the buttocks. Chunks of flesh had been removed to make the slanting three-barred cross, reminding Robin of a scored side of bacon.

‘The mutilation was done a good bit after he was killed,’ said Strike. ‘There’s not enough blood here for it to have been done immediately after death.’

‘His killers were in the shop for two hou—’ began Robin.

‘He was attacked from behind, hit over the head with something heavy,’ said Kim, interrupting Robin. ‘The back of the skull’s caved in. The PM said that’s what actually killed him, the stoving-in of the head. Blood must’ve started pooling in the lower part of the body before they started to mutilate it. Maybe that was deliberate. Maybe they didn’t want blood seeping out under the vault door.’

‘Wouldn’t have mattered if it had, nobody was there on Saturday or Sunday,’ said Strike. ‘D’you know where this footprint was, relative to the body?’ he said, looking at the third picture.

‘Underneath it,’ said Kim. ‘They saw it when they lifted him.’

‘Really?’ said Strike, frowning slightly as he handed the last picture to Robin, who saw a faint, partial print in what had clearly been fresh blood. She noticed a couple of things about it, but rather than say them in front of Kim, she asked,

‘What about the four men who entered the shop that night?’

‘They didn’t,’ said Kim, looking at Strike, rather than Robin. ‘They’ve been ruled out. Apparently, everyone’s shitting themselves, and that’s largely down to you.’

‘What’ve I got to do with it?’ said Strike.

‘My contact says you fed them info from a contact – an actual gangster, or someone – who said it wasn’t Jason Knowles in the vault.’

Kim’s bright brown eyes were searching Strike’s face for confirmation, but as he remained impassive, she said,

‘So, not long after you did that – if it’s true – they got confirmation of what you’d said. My guy says they got new information, I don’t know from where.’

From the undercover NCA guy, Strike and Robin thought simultaneously.

‘Apparently Jason Knowles was lured away thinking he was going to do a big housebreaking, so he had nothing to do with the silver vault job after all, and now everyone’s pissed off at you for being right.’

‘How did they rule out the four men in Wild Court?’ asked Strike.

‘Well, everyone’s been scrambling to re-check everything Truman did, and they went back to the footage of the four men entering Wild Court from Great Queen Street. I don’t know the ins and outs, but they finally traced them. Four pissed foreign students, apparently. They were lost, wandered down Wild Court, had some kind of argument, split up and finally found their way back to their hostel. The police have ruled them out completely as having anything to do with the robbery, so now the mystery is, how and when did Wright get back to the shop if he wasn’t one of those four men, because they can’t find footage to match him anywhere.

‘Plus,’ said Kim, ‘there was something about a delivery driver called McGee or something who went to Dalston, but I didn’t quite understand what my contact was saying there. I’d got him quite drunk,’ Kim added, with another of her little laughs.

‘Dalston,’ repeated Strike, making a note.

‘Yeah, he drove there and back up Old Street or something, but as I say, I don’t know how that’s relevant – I expect you do,’ Kim said, smiling at Strike.

She sat back in her chair, legs crossed, and looking, as Robin supposed she had every right to do, exceptionally pleased with herself.

‘Anything new on that getaway car?’ asked Strike. ‘The Peugeot?’

‘Oh, yes, I nearly forgot,’ said Kim. ‘They think there was a couple in it. I assume some expert’s managed to enhance pictures of it from CCTV cameras that were actually working. It looks like a man and a woman.’

‘Right,’ said Strike. ‘Well, cheers, this is going to be a huge help.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Kim, still smiling, but she didn’t get up.

‘Um, would it be OK if I have a quick private word with Cormoran, Robin?’

Robin was surprised to find her hackles could rise any higher, but as it turned out, they still had plenty of room to elevate.

‘Of course,’ she said, trying to sound gracious as she got to her feet. She supposed she, too, ought to congratulate Kim on the extra information she’d got out of the police, but as Kim had acted until this point as though Robin was entirely invisible, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, but simply left the room, closing the door behind her.

‘Sorry,’ Kim said to Strike, once Robin had gone, ‘but I thought you’d probably rather nobody else hears this.’

‘Hears what?’

‘Bijou Watkins is being followed by Farah Navabi’s agency, on Andrew Honbold’s instructions.’

Strike simply stared at her. The sentence contained components that didn’t appear to fit together.

‘Farah’s still keen on me joining her,’ said Kim. ‘She rang last night and told me you’re going to be hounded out of business by bad press.’

Ignoring a sudden burning sensation behind his navel, Strike said,

‘Andrew Honbold hired Farah Navabi? The woman who bugged his office?’

‘She said all that stuff about him being a “good, good man” on the stand, and cried about how she was coerced by Patterson and he lapped it up. So he’s hired her to follow Watkins.’

‘Why?’ said Strike. ‘Why’s he having her followed?’

‘I don’t know, but Navabi seemed to think it might be a problem for you.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, ‘thanks for the tip.’

Kim got up.

‘And we’re good about the Midge thing, right?’

‘Yeah,’ said Strike, who just wanted her to leave. ‘Fine.’

Kim left the room. Robin reappeared in the doorway.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked, because Strike’s expression was now strangely shut down.

‘Yeah, fine,’ said Strike again, checking his watch. They still had a good bit of time before lunch with Decima. ‘Actually – could you give me another moment? Need to make a phone call.’

48

Robin withdrew again. To her displeasure, Kim was taking her time about leaving the office, standing beside the door and fiddling with the contents of her shoulder bag. As Pat’s chair was empty, Robin assumed she was in the bathroom on the landing. Kim looked round, and said, smiling,

‘Didn’t want to do that, but he had to know.’

‘Know what?’ said Robin.

‘Probably shouldn’t say,’ said Kim, maddeningly smug. She pulled on her coat, and left.

Meanwhile, in the inner office, Strike was trying to contact his old friend, lawyer Ilsa Herbert, the woman through whom Strike had met Bijou in the first place. Ilsa couldn’t be blamed for Strike and Bijou’s two-night stand; indeed, she’d tried to warn him off the woman after their first night together, telling him she was mouthy and indiscreet, but Strike – exasperated by the unsolicited advice and angry about Robin’s deepening relationship with Murphy – had made it clear to Ilsa that his private life was none of her concern.

Ilsa’s mobile was engaged. Strike redialled several times, and the five minutes it took him to reach her felt like an hour. At last, she answered.

‘Hi, Corm.’

He knew immediately from her tone that she knew what he was calling about.

‘I’m just going to get somewhere a bit more private,’ she said.

Strike listened to her footsteps, wishing she was running. At last Ilsa spoke again, her voice echoing slightly.

‘OK, I can talk.’

‘What d’you know about Honbold and Bijou Watkins?’ he said.

‘How—?’

‘I’ve just had a tip-off he’s having her followed.’

‘Oh, God. Well, rumours are flying that Honbold’s taken out a super-injunction.’

‘Why?’

‘To stop the papers printing that he doesn’t know whether Bijou’s baby is his or yours.’

Strike didn’t speak immediately, because the worst of the imaginings that had run through his head while waiting for Ilsa to pick up had just come true.

He’d used protection when he’d slept with Bijou, because he wasn’t a fool. After he’d told her he didn’t want to see her again he’d realised that her target, all along, had been the married QC whom she hoped to force to leave his wife; Strike had been an enjoyable diversion and a possible means of making Andrew Honbold jealous. Bijou and Strike had both subsequently lied to the QC, saying their acquaintanceship had never gone further than drinks. Honbold, a well-known scourge of the tabloid press, had been thrown out by his wife after his affair with Bijou hit the papers, and until this morning, Strike had considered the matter closed, assuming, in the absence of other information, that Honbold would be marrying Bijou once his divorce came through.

‘It’s not mine,’ he said, and then, ‘it can’t be, if she hasn’t had the kid yet.’

‘She has, she had it early,’ said Ilsa. ‘Well, she’s saying it was early…’

‘Can’t they tell?’ said Strike, who was almost entirely ignorant of everything concerned with birth and newborns.

‘I don’t know the details, Corm.’

‘Why the fuck does Honbold – has she told him we—?’

‘She didn’t tell him,’ said Ilsa hesitantly. ‘Corm – I’m sorry, I tried to warn you. The whole of chambers knew you and she had slept together, it was bound to get back to Honbold at some point – I mean, before she got pregnant, she wanted him to hear about it, to make him jealous. Apparently a journalist got wind of the fact that Honbold thinks the baby might be yours, and Honbold went straight to the High Court to stop him printing. He doesn’t want to be all over the papers again, but I think he and Bijou have broken up. I suppose he’s having her followed because he’d rather not pay child maintenance. He’s trying to prove she’s still sneaking around with you.’

‘It can’t be mine,’ said Strike.

He didn’t like the silence that followed.

‘What?’ he said aggressively.

‘I don’t—’

‘You know something.’

‘Corm—’

‘Just say it!’

‘OK, fine. She had a little trick when she was trying to get Honbold to leave his wife. She’d take used condoms out of the bin and…’

‘She wouldn’t have done that to me,’ said Strike, as his innards crawled with panic. ‘It was Honbold she wanted.’

Again, Ilsa didn’t speak.

‘D’you know something else?’ Strike said.

‘I don’t know it, they’re just rumours,’ said Ilsa. ‘Lawyers are terrible goss—’

‘What rumours?’

‘OK, there’s this story doing the rounds that Honbold is taking some drug that lowers sperm count, so he thought it was strange that he’d been able to get her pregnant, and then it got back to him about you and her, and he went ballistic and now he’s convinced it’s yours.’

‘When was it born?’ said Strike, trying to remember times and dates, to find the numerical formula that would prove, beyond doubt, that he wasn’t the father.

‘I don’t know exactly – early December?’

This was nowhere near precise enough for Strike. If the baby had been born at term, there was a chance…

‘I literally heard about all this yesterday afternoon when people were whispering about the super-injunction,’ said Ilsa. ‘He must have only just hired this private detective—’

‘Yeah, I think he has,’ said Strike, who was now actually sweating beneath his suit jacket. ‘If you hear anything else—’

‘Yes, of course, I’ll call you,’ said Ilsa. ‘Corm, I – I’m sorry.’

‘You tried to warn me,’ said Strike, which cost him some effort. ‘Listen, can you send me Bijou’s number? I deleted it.’

‘OK.’

‘And can you please not tell Robin about any of this? I’d rather tell her myself.’

‘Of course.’

The call ended, and Strike opened the door to the outer office, where Pat sat typing. Robin was absent.

‘Where—?’

‘Loo,’ said Pat gruffly.

Strike’s phone buzzed. Ilsa had just sent him Bijou’s contact details. He retreated into the inner office, thinking… he couldn’t call her now, not with Robin just about to walk back in. It would have to be later, after lunch with Decima.

Meanwhile, inside the small, dank bathroom on the landing, Robin was washing her hands, thinking that if Strike was going to praise Kim’s undeniably impressive bit of detective work when she emerged, she might not be able to respond with much grace.

‘Everything all right?’ she asked again, when she’d rejoined him.

‘Yeah, Kim just wanted to discuss some personal stuff,’ said Strike, struggling to sound casual.

‘She sees you as the firm’s HR rep, does she?’ said Robin.

‘Christ knows,’ said Strike.

Robin sat down again and said,

‘So: the couple in the Peugeot. You don’t think—?’

‘Oz and Medina?’ said Strike, trying to concentrate (he thought he could count on Kim not telling Robin anything about Bijou – Kim, he was certain, would like nothing better than to think she and Strike had a slightly sordid secret that excluded his partner). ‘Got to be a chance.’

Robin picked up the photograph that showed the footprint in the blood around the corpse’s head.

‘That looks small for a man’s foot, doesn’t it?’

‘Yeah, I thought so, too,’ said Strike.

‘And it was under the body.’

‘Great. I mean, yeah,’ said Strike, still struggling to focus.

‘The mutilation, the sash – it looks like very deliberate staging,’ said Robin. ‘Why didn’t they get rid of the footprint?’

‘Maybe they didn’t notice it, then moved the body over it, while they were mutilating him.’

‘You know, if Medina was driving that Peugeot to pick Oz up after the killing, she might not have seen blood on him,’ said Robin. ‘Whoever did it waited for livor mortis to start setting in before they got started cutting the body up…’

Robin’s phone now buzzed, and she saw a text from her brother Stephen.

‘Everything OK?’ Strike asked, in response to Robin’s look of shock.

‘Yes, fine, my sister-in-law’s just had an emergency Caesarean… God above, the baby was nearly eleven pounds.’

‘Same as me,’ said Strike, still striving to sound normal.

‘When have you had an emergency Caesarean?’ said Robin.

‘No, I was nearly eleven pounds. It’s how I got my name.’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘“Cormoran”. He was a Cornish giant. My mother said she was going to call me that, as a joke, my aunt took her seriously and said she couldn’t, so of course that’s what I got called, to piss off Joan.’

‘They’re calling him “Barnaby”,’ said Robin, looking at the picture of her new nephew, who was bright red, swaddled in a hospital towel, with a sumo wrestler’s indignant face. ‘Born on Friday the thirteenth.’

‘Who was?’ said Strike.

‘My nephew. Today’s Friday—’

‘Oh,’ said Strike. ‘Yeah, of course.’

He wasn’t a superstitious man, but he thought that might well change, after today.

49

Strike’s conscience was whispering that he ought to tell Robin exactly what fresh, unforeseen calamity had descended upon him, that he had to warn her that another deluge of tabloid smut might be about to engulf them. However, after the story about the call girl, and his forced admission that he’d slept with Nina Lascelles, not to mention Robin’s rape being made public on the back of his newsworthy love life, Strike didn’t much fancy adding to the already unsavoury heap of circumstances in his disfavour that there was a remote chance – please, God, a fucking remote chance – he’d fathered a child with a woman he detested. A primitive sense of self-interest therefore shouted conscience down: he’d fix things without Robin ever having to know.

At a quarter past twelve, the two partners left the office for lunch in Dean Street. The day was cold and bright, the sun overhead a dazzling platinum coin trying to burn its way through the cloud cover. Trying to dissemble his new state of acute anxiety, Strike said,

‘Looks like we can rule out Wright being killed in a fight that got out of hand. Someone stoved in the back of his head while he had his back turned. That was no accident.’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘which must make it more likely the mutilation, the masonic sash and the hallmark were planned, pre-murder.’

‘How many people would you say know A. H. Murdoch’s hallmark?’

‘Not many,’ said Robin, ‘but the Salem Cross is a masonic symbol, too.’

‘True,’ said Strike. He remembered the scarlet letter ‘G’ that had been painted on the office street door at New Year. ‘Any luck finding a new Land Rover?’

‘No,’ said Robin, ‘they’re all way out of my price range, even second hand… have we had any more calls from that Scottish Gateshead, by the way? The Golden Fleece person?’

‘Nothing since New Year,’ said Strike.

His mobile rang. He tugged it out of his pocket, saw that Pat was calling him. Afraid that Bijou, who no longer had his mobile number, was trying to reach him at the office, he switched his phone to mute.

‘Lucy,’ he said to Robin. ‘I’ll call her back. On that subject… we’ve just sold Ted and Joan’s house. I was thinking: the business could pay for part of a Land Rover, and I could loan you the rest.’

‘Wh—? You can’t do that!’

‘Yeah, I can. The money’s just going to sit in my account, I haven’t got any use for it at the moment.’

Robin’s immediate thought was of Murphy, and what he’d think of her taking a loan of this size from Cormoran Strike. He was bound to see it as another bond between them, another commitment of the type she’d never yet made to him. And yet she felt strangely vulnerable and bereft without her own car, her own means of – the word ‘escape’ rose in her mind, and was dismissed.

Quo Vadis, the large black-fronted restaurant and private members’ club where Decima had booked lunch, was now within view. Realising she hadn’t yet responded to what, by any standard, was a very generous offer, Robin said,

‘Strike, thank you, but you can’t. It’s too much.’

‘You need your own car and I don’t think any business manager would advise us to keep hiring them for you.’

‘But—’

‘The Land Rover was bloody handy, ’specially for long journeys and trips outside London.’

‘But even second hand, they cost—’

‘I know what they cost. We’ll see how much the accountant’ll let you charge against the business and I’ll make up the difference. We can have a loan agreement if it makes you feel any better.’

‘But it could take ages to pay you back.’

Good, thought Strike, but aloud he said,

‘So? I’ve just told you, I haven’t got any use for the money right now.’

‘It’s really generous of you,’ said Robin, and she thought with some longing of a second-hand Defender 90 she’d spotted online just the previous day. ‘But—’

‘Christ’s sake, I’m not offering you a kidney,’ said Strike, and Robin laughed.

They entered the club. The foyer had blood red walls. At the reception, they gave Decima’s name and were led upstairs, past the entrance to a large restaurant with white walls and leather seats around tables, then into a small private room called the Library, which had dark blue walls, book shelves and orb-shaped lamps.

Decima was already sitting at the round table, wearing a loose black dress. She’d lost a lot of weight since she and Strike had last met; her large brown eyes were shadowed, but she’d brushed her hair and dyed its grey roots. Her air was of a creature who’d been forcibly flushed out of their burrow into the daylight. Strike, who’d been dreading having to watch Decima breastfeed, registered that there was no baby present.

‘You haven’t brought—?’

‘Lion? No, I’ve got a local girl babysitting,’ said Decima, and she glanced down at the phone lying face up beside her. ‘He’ll be OK, I expressed plenty of milk for him.’

This fell into the category of too much information as far as Strike was concerned, but Robin said, smiling,

‘Have you got any pictures of him?’

‘A couple,’ said Decima. She brought up the photos of her child to show Robin.

‘He’s lovely,’ said Robin, but in fact, to Robin, he just looked like a baby, any baby. He seemed smaller than the huge nephew whose picture she’d just been sent, but otherwise indistinguishable from most others. Yet unlike the baby pictures Robin was increasingly used to seeing from friends and family, these were all of the child alone, on a changing mat, or asleep in his cot. Of course, nobody lived with Decima to take a picture of her with her child, and the father had never even seen him.

‘I didn’t want to leave him, I’ve never done it before,’ Decima said nervily, ‘but I had to come to town today, I needed to sort out some staffing problems. Hopefully they can get along without me for a bit longer.’

‘I like this club,’ said Robin, trying to put Decima at her ease.

‘I chose it because it’s near your office, and we can be private. My father hates it,’ Decima added.

‘I can’t see how anyone could dislike this,’ said Robin, looking around at the understated elegance of the place; the wood panelling, the fresh flowers.

‘My father doesn’t approve of any clubs except his own,’ said Decima. ‘Anyway, this is always full of media people. The shitterati, my father calls them.’

Robin might have laughed if Decima hadn’t looked so strained.

A waiter now arrived to take drinks orders.

‘Just water, please, I’m breastfeeding,’ said Decima, which again, as far as Strike was concerned, was information the waiter didn’t need.

When the door had closed again, Decima launched immediately into speech, looking at Strike rather than Robin, her tone shakily assertive.

‘There are a couple of things I want to say, if that’s OK.’

‘Of course,’ said Strike.

‘OK, well, firstly: you seem to think that, if Rupe managed to give Dredge some money, the man wouldn’t have hurt Rupe, but Zac owed Dredge much more than two thousand pounds. Dredge still had a motive to hurt Rupe: to send a message to Zac!’

‘That’s possible,’ said Strike, ‘but we’ve found no evidence to sugg—’

‘And if Rupe had two thousand pounds, he must have sold the nef! He obviously got an advance payment from Ramsay Silver, pending them selling it!’

‘The owner of Ramsay Silver says he’s only ever had one nef in stock,’ said Strike. ‘It was masonic, and taken the night Wright was murdered.’

‘But Ramsay would hardly admit to having my father’s nef, would he?’ said Decima. ‘It was stolen!’

‘Well, it’s notoriously difficult to prove a negative,’ said Strike, careful to keep his tone polite. ‘We can’t be a hundred per cent certain Kenneth Ramsay never bought your father’s nef, but I think it’s very unlikely. His shop specialises in masonic pieces and—’

‘But then, where did Rupe get two thousand pounds from?’

‘I’m not denying he might have sold the nef somewh—’

‘But it’s kind of a huge coincidence that a body turns up in Ramsay Silver that exactly matches Rupe, who had a big bit of silver to sell, isn’t it?’ said Decima, her voice now rising in pitch. ‘And that Rupe had a drug dealer after him, who’d made threats to literally kill him?’

She’d said this already, of course, both in person and by email. Strike might have responded that the body no more exactly fitted Rupert Fleetwood than any of the other men whose pictures were pinned up on the corkboard in the office. He might even have pointed out that there had to be thousands of people up and down the country who had bits of silver they’d like to turn into ready cash, but that he saw no reason to suppose any of them had died in the silver vault, either. While he was trying to formulate a diplomatic response, Decima said,

‘And I wanted to say something else. I don’t believe Rupert went to Sacha Legard’s birthday party. Sacha’s either lying, or he’s made a mistake.’

‘I don’t think he can have made a mistake,’ said Strike. ‘There were a lot of witnesses. It’d be a very stupid lie to tell.’

‘But Rupe would never have gone there!’

‘Why d’you say that?’

‘Because a week before that party, Sacha was at Dino’s with some friends, and they were all talking about the party, and when Sacha looked up and realised it was Rupe serving him cocktails he looked really embarrassed, because he hadn’t told Rupe about it or given him an invitation or anything. But Rupe said to me he’d rather be dead in a ditch all night than go along to Claridge’s with Sacha and his friends. And the party was on the twenty-first, which was bang in the middle of the weekend Rupe and Zac were moving out of their house, so why on earth would Rupe have wanted to go to a party where he wasn’t wanted, when he was busy packing up and organising everything? And you said he went there to talk to Val – Val’s the last person he’d have wanted to see, after the business with the nef, and with Val being so foul about us being together!’

‘I thought it an odd thing for Rupert to do, myself,’ said Strike. ‘Apparently he spoke to your sister Cosima, as well as your broth—’

‘Cosima’s my half-sister,’ said Decima. Patches of red had appeared in her pale cheeks now, ‘and Rupe hated her, so that makes no sense, either!’

‘Why did he hate—?’

‘Because she’s entitled and spoiled. My father adores her and gives her everything she w—’

The waiter reappeared to take their food orders. Both Strike and Robin chose pasta at random.

When the waiter had disappeared, Strike said,

‘I’ve got a few new questions for you, Decima, if you wouldn’t mind.’

Now looking as though she suspected a trap, Decima said,

‘Go on.’

‘Did Rupert ever mention a man by the name of Calvin Osgood, or Oz?’

‘No. Why?’

‘There’s a possibility Oz was involved in the murder.’

‘He might have been one of Dredge’s friends!’ said Decima at once.

‘Possibly,’ said Strike, who wanted to stave off tears, if at all possible. ‘What about a girl called Sofia Medina?’

‘No,’ said Decima again, but now she looked worried. ‘Why?’

‘She might have been involved, too,’ said Strike.

‘No, I never heard him mention anyone called Sofia.’

‘OK, moving on: would you happen to have a phone number for Tish Benton? Her parents in Hampshire seem to be away and I can’t find a current address for her.’

‘Why d’you want to talk to Tish? She won’t know anything.’

‘Lorimer told me she’d become something of a confidant to Rupert before the household split up.’

‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Decima at once.

‘Well, that’s what Lorimer said.’

‘No, I haven’t got Tish’s number… she and Zac got on Rupe’s nerves, bickering all the time when they were sharing the house. I don’t think she was ever close to Rupe,’ Decima added, with a tinge of fear that made Robin’s heart clench in pity.

‘What line of work is Tish in, do you know?’ asked Strike.

‘Marketing – she worked for some firm that makes handbags. I can’t remember which one.’

‘OK,’ said Strike, making a note. ‘Still on Lorimer: he suggested Rupert might have gone back to Switzerland to be a ski instructor.’

‘Rupe would never have gone to be a ski instructor – for God’s sake,’ said Decima, her voice suddenly raw. ‘Never! He didn’t want to learn to ski in the first place, but they made him, at his bloody school. He hated it. Who wouldn’t, after their parents died that way? Zac was supposed to be his friend, you’d think he’d realise that’s the last thing Rupe would have wanted to do!’

‘I thought it was unlikely myself,’ said Strike. ‘Now, this next question might seem strange, but Zacharias mentioned Rupert having a “lucky T-shirt”.’

‘Oh – yes, he did,’ said Decima, and for a split second, their client almost smiled, but then her face fell. ‘They found it in Wright’s room?’

‘No,’ said Strike, ‘but can you tell us about it?’

‘Why?’

‘Lorimer says Rupert tore it up before he disappeared.’

‘What?’ said Decima weakly. ‘No, he… he’d never have done that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because… he thought it was lucky, he loved it.’

‘What made it lucky?’ asked Robin.

‘He was always wearing it when good things happened to him: when he heard he’d got a job in London and could come back to England, and when he passed his driving test – and – and he was w-wearing it – the night – I told him – I w-was pregnant…’

Oh God, thought Robin. Oh shit.

Decima burst into tears.

‘He can’t have torn it up!’ she wailed, all restraint gone: Robin thought her voice was likely to have carried across the whole floor of the club. Robin reached instinctively across the table to offer comfort, but their client recoiled.

‘No – no – don’t – he can’t have torn that T-shirt up, he can’t…’

Strike’s and Robin’s eyes met, the former’s slightly exasperated, Robin’s anguished.

‘He loved that T-shirt!’ sobbed Decima, groping for her napkin. ‘He loved it!’

‘Can you describe it for us?’ said Robin, with no real aim in view except to give Decima the sense that she was being taken seriously, and listened to, and that the detectives were still actively trying to help.

‘It’s b-black,’ sobbed Decima indistinctly, her face now concealed behind the napkin, ‘with “White Lion” written on it—’

‘“White Lion”?’ repeated Robin.

‘They were an eighties band,’ sobbed Decima, ‘glam rock… Rupe found the T-shirt in a second-hand shop, when he was a teenager… he had this bit of video… of his dad singing a White Lion song to him, when he was a baby… “Little Fighter”, the song’s called… and – and Rupe used to sing it… it was a sort of joke… sort of a personal theme song… that’s why I called Lion “Lion”!’

‘Right,’ said Robin, and not caring what Strike thought, she added, ‘well, it sounds as though Zacharias must have made a mistake. I can’t see why Rupert would have torn up the T-shirt, if it meant that much to him.’

The door now opened again and the waiter reappeared with their food. He remained tactfully oblivious to Decima’s tears as he set down her plate, while she wiped her face and blew her nose.

When the waiter had withdrawn, Strike said,

‘You’re probably aware the police considered other contenders for Wright, aside from Jason Knowles?’

Robin couldn’t understand the abrupt change of subject, but Strike was acting entirely out of self-interest. He had a nasty feeling that immediately after this interview, Robin was going to tell him they had a moral duty to convince Decima that her boyfriend had never been William Wright, but he wasn’t going to sacrifice the imminent trip to Crieff and Ironbridge; he needed that Lake District hotel. It was essential, therefore, that Robin heard from Decima’s own lips that she wanted them to rule out all other possible contenders for the dead man in the vault.

‘Yes, I… I knew they considered other people,’ said Decima, still trying to stem her tears, ‘Sir Daniel – Sir Daniel Gayle,’ she added in parenthesis to Robin, ‘he’s a retired commissioner –’ She said it with a pathetic insistence on his rank – you see, I’ve got reliable sources of information, I’m well connected, I’m rational – ‘told me they were looking into a missing veteran, and some man who’d killed someone by accident, and run away.’

‘One of them had killed someone by accident, had he?’ said Strike. ‘Can you remember a name?’

‘No. Sir Daniel said they were really only keeping the files open on those two men because they couldn’t get DNA for either of them. Why are you asking about them?’ she said, still trying to stem her tears with the napkin.

‘You said you wanted proof of who the man in the vault was,’ said Strike. ‘That necessarily means looking at the other possibilities, but if you’d rather we focused solely on Rupert, and what happened to him—’

‘He’s dead, I know he’s dead!’ said Decima, now with a trace of hysteria. ‘I do want certainty – but I know who it was in the vault…’

‘So you’d like us to try and rule out those two men?’ said Strike.

‘I suppose, if you can, it might make the police wake up and take Rupe more seriously,’ said Decima, wiping her eyes on the napkin. ‘I said to them, “you can take DNA from my baby, when he’s born, you can check it against Wright’s”… but after Anjelica said he was in New York, that was it, they stopped investigating… it was because we weren’t married, I know that… but he’s not in New York, he can’t be… I keep thinking I hear him…’

‘You hear him?’ said Robin, worried.

‘I think I hear him, coming up the drive… or calling my name… I dream he’s come back, but I know he’ll never come back… he’ll never see Lion… he’ll never know… never know how sorry I am…’

‘Sorry for what?’ said Robin.

‘The last time I ever spoke to him… I was so angry at him for stealing the nef, it was such a stupid thing to do… it’s my fault, it’s all my fault, I was angry and Rupe felt he had no other choice but to try and sort out the whole mess alone… I killed him,’ wailed Decima Mullins, ‘and one day I’ll have to explain to Lion what I did!’

50

An hour after they’d sat down with Decima, and with no more information gained than they’d learned within the first quarter of an hour of lunch, Strike and Robin left Quo Vadis, both aware that their client was considerably unhappier for having met them. Decima had continued to insist over her untouched food that Rupert had been William Wright, reiterating the danger posed by Dredge the drug dealer, and dwelling with a kind of morbid despair on the height and build of the body in the vault, which, as she’d emphasised multiple times, exactly matched Rupert, down to height, weight and blood group.

While Strike had left the restaurant with Decima’s official sanction for the trip to Crieff and Ironbridge, he could tell he was about to have trouble with Robin, who looked both angry and worried, so he suggested a coffee at his favourite local café, which was three minutes’ walk away. Sure enough, once both were sitting at a round metal table outside Bar Italia, Robin said,

‘I don’t feel comfortable about this, Strike.’

‘About what?’ he said, prepared for battle. He’d been marshalling his arguments on the way to Frith Street. The sleeper compartments were booked. The hotel, with its lake views, was waiting.

‘I think that woman’s having a nervous breakdown. She’s convinced herself Rupert’s dead and it’s her fault. We’re just perpetuating—’

‘If we don’t do the job, someone else will,’ said Strike.

‘Then we should put surveillance on Albie Simpson-White. I’m sure he knows where Rupert is.’

‘Decima’s been very clear that she doesn’t want Rupert found, if he’s alive.’

‘But – Strike, come on, that’s insane – you saw her back there—’

‘You’ll probably find a couple of people on any London bus who’re as deluded as she is. She’s not certifiable.’

‘She’s in sole charge of a baby – I’m sorry, I think we’ve got—’

‘A moral responsibility? I agree, which is why the quicker we prove that body wasn’t Fleetwood—’

‘You just want to keep investigating. You want to show up the Met.’

As soon as she heard the words escape her, Robin wished them unsaid. She hadn’t meant it; Murphy had spoken suddenly through her, or perhaps she was projecting onto Strike her guilt about the number of things she herself was concealing from her boyfriend.

‘“Show up the Met”?’ repeated Strike, staring at her.

‘I didn’t mean that,’ said Robin hurriedly. ‘I—’

‘You think this is all an ego trip for me, do you?’

‘No, of course not, I just think you’ve got really interested in that body in the vault, and you’re not thinking about what’s best for De—’

‘What’s best for her is that she stops blaming herself for getting Fleetwood murdered,’ said Strike, ‘because he wasn’t fucking murdered, and someone needs to prove it to her.’

‘But we could prove it, by following Albie Sim—’

‘If Mrs Two-Times hurries up and fucks someone else, or if Plug breaks the law, then yeah, we might have someone free to follow Simpson-White, but how exactly are we supposed to bill Decima for it, when she’s explicitly said that’s not what she wants?’

‘So we let her pour money into investigating the whereabouts of men with no connection to her?’

‘She agreed to it, back there—’

‘You know perfectly well you made her say it!’

‘We can’t take her money without being open about how we’re using it!’

And now Strike took the offensive; he hadn’t wanted to do it, because he’d hoped not to embark on their journey to Scotland with Robin angry at him, but with the trip itself in jeopardy he had no choice.

‘You agreed to take this case, knowing she’s almost certainly deluded about that body being Fleetwood.’

‘I know, but—’

‘The only thing that’s changed is that you’ve met her and feel sorry for her.’

‘Maybe that’s true,’ said Robin, ‘but—’

‘For her, it’s prove who that body was, or nothing. While Fleetwood’s uncontactable, she’s going to keep trying to prove it was him. If it’s not us, it’ll be someone else. The difference with us is, we don’t bill for bullshit. We’re actively trying to do what she wants, and if it turns out Wright was Semple, Powell or de Lion, job done – he wasn’t Fleetwood.’

‘And if we prove it’s none of them?’

‘Then she’s right: the police might take the possibility it was Fleetwood a bit more seriously, she’ll get her DNA test and bingo, she’s got certainty. You think I’m not trying to help her, but I am. If I can find a way of forcing Valentine to talk—’

‘Why’s it OK to force Valentine to talk to us, but not put surveillance on Albie? Why’s it OK to try and find that girl Tish who Rupert lived with?’

‘Because anything Fleetwood did and said before he disappeared could shed a light on whether he was intending to disguise himself as William Wright. We can justify that on her bills. What we can’t justify is trying to find the living Fleetwood, because the client’s expressly said she doesn’t want us to!’

‘But she’s going to have to face the possibility at some point!’

‘It isn’t our job to tell the client what she wants investigating,’ said Strike. ‘We aren’t fucking social workers.’

They sat in silence for nearly a minute, during which Robin drank some of her coffee, not looking at Strike.

‘I need to get going,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to get changed, I’m on Plug this evening. If I don’t see you before, I’ll meet you at Euston on Monday evening.’

Strike watched her go, unhappy with the way the conversation had gone, then pulled his muted mobile out of his pocket. He had another missed call from Pat, in addition to the one he’d ignored on the way to Quo Vadis. He called her back.

‘Hi,’ he said, ‘you’ve been trying to reach me.’

‘Yes,’ said Pat, ‘a woman called Bijou Watkins wants to talk to you.’

Strike knew Pat was aware who Bijou Watkins was, but he appreciated the pretence she’d forgotten the smattering of press connecting him with Bijou a few months previously.

‘OK,’ said Strike. ‘I’ve got her details. I’ll ring her now.’

‘Right-o,’ said Pat gruffly, and she hung up.

Strike contemplated Ronnie Scott’s jazz club, which lay almost opposite the café where he was sitting, thinking about what he was about to say. Then he took a lungful of nicotine vapour and called Bijou’s number.

51

‘Hello?’

‘It’s me. Strike.’

‘Oh, thank God,’ said Bijou. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to have to drag you into this, but—’

‘I know about the super-injunction. I know he thinks it’s my kid.’

‘Wh – how?’

‘Because people have been fucking gossiping,’ said Strike, ‘exactly as you intended them to when you were trying to make Honbold jealous enough to leave his wife.’

‘You don’t underst—’

‘Don’t you dare fucking tell me I don’t understand,’ said Strike, his temper barely under control now he heard her loud, husky voice again, because it reminded him of the tedious hours he’d spent in her company, all in the service of two easy fucks, and of his own stupidity. ‘Now, listen to me. He’s having you followed.’

‘Andrew is?’

‘Who else?’ said Strike, keeping his voice low with difficulty, because a hardy middle-aged couple had now, most inconveniently, decided to brave the cold and sit at the next table. Abandoning his coffee, Strike got to his feet, shoved his vape pen back into his coat pocket and headed off in the direction of Denmark Street. ‘So there can’t be any face-to-face meetings between us, if that’s what you were calling to suggest.’

‘Oh God, oh God,’ moaned Bijou. ‘What does the person following me look like?’

‘How the fuck do I know? I’m just warning you, you need to live like an agoraphobic nun from now until you get the DNA test results.’

‘Andrew’s refusing to do a test! He’s convinced she’s yours!’

‘And she’s not?’

‘Of course she’s not!’

‘You’re sure about that?’

‘Yes, of course I am!’

‘Because since we last met, I’ve been filled in on an unpleasant bedroom habit of yours,’ said Strike mercilessly.

‘What d’you—?’

‘Used condoms. Bedroom bin. Do-It-Yourself.’

‘I never—’

‘That’s not what my source says, and I’m afraid I find them a lot more credible than you. I’ve also heard Honbold might have good reason to think he can’t get a woman pregnant.’

‘You mean the sulfasalazine? That only lowers sperm count, it doesn’t make you infertile!’

‘If,’ said Strike, ‘you deliberately got pregnant by me, because Honbold was firing blanks and you thought you’d be able to convince him the kid was his—’

‘What do you think I am?’

‘I know exactly what you are, which is why we’re having this fucking conversation. I warned you when you dragged me into your mess last time, I won’t take it lying down if this causes me even more fucking grief than it has already.’

‘You’re threatening a new mother!’ said Bijou shrilly. ‘How will that play in the press?’

‘You go to the press, I’ll be fighting fire with fucking nukes, so don’t you dare threaten me with the fucking papers. Honbold’s got to take a paternity test—’

‘He says he won’t do it unless I take him to court! He’s so angry – Cormoran, please, please, I need you to do it, so I can prove Ottolie’s his—’

‘Will I fuck,’ said Strike, incensed. ‘That implies I think I might be the fucking father, and when word of that leaks out—’

‘How would it leak out?’

‘Probably from you, because you tell everyone every-fucking-thing, you can’t keep your fucking mouth shut even when it’s in your own best interests. If you tell Honbold I’m giving a DNA sample, his every fucking suspicion will be confirmed—’

‘It won’t, it won’t, I’ll tell him you’re only doing it to prove you’re not the—’

‘Unless you’re lying, unless you think the kid might be mine, you don’t need my DNA. Tell Honbold you’ll take him to court if necessary and see how his fucking super-injunction holds up then.’

‘But if I do that, he’ll never—’

‘Marry you? You still think you’re going to be Mrs Andrew Honbold, after this? Tell him you’ll see him in court, and leave me the fuck out of it.’

Seething, Strike cut the call.

52

Robin’s Friday really only ended in the early hours of Saturday morning, when the lights in Plug’s mother’s house in Camberwell went out, and she knew her target, who’d done a lot of shouting that afternoon, had finally gone to bed. She drove home through the icy night in her hired Mazda, yawning regularly, thinking against her will of a multitude of stressful things, Decima Mullins foremost among them.

Strike might well be correct in saying the fragile woman obsessed with the corpse in the silver shop would only hire somebody else if they refused to investigate for her, but this was the first time Robin had felt grubby just for doing her job, and she didn’t need more things on her conscience. The imminent trip to Crieff and Ironbridge was already weighing on it, because she’d deliberately obfuscated their precise destinations to Murphy, leaving him with the vague impression that they were looking for Rupert Fleetwood somewhere in Northumbria. Worst of all were the small ripples of mingled apprehension and excitement she felt when she pictured that Lake District hotel.

To compound Robin’s general and specific stresses, Murphy was now pressuring her to commit to viewing at least one of the houses he kept forwarding her, and a stream of information about her new nephew appeared on her phone every ten minutes, or so it felt, meaning that Robin had to fake the delight and fascination her family seemed to expect of her, and would need to find time in her busy schedule to buy and send a gift.

Babies seemed to be everywhere. Jenny and the miniature sumo called Barnaby; Robin’s cousin Katie, to whose first son she was godmother, had just announced her second pregnancy; the soon-to-be-born child of the warring Martin and Carmen; Robin’s policewoman friend, Vanessa Ekwensi, was due to give birth shortly; and Lion Fleetwood, photographed looking frail and startled on his changing mat.

Don’t think about it. Ever since the shock of the ectopic pregnancy had worn off, Robin had been repressing a treacherous tendency in herself to dwell on the fact that what had split open her fallopian tube had been an actual human being. Better by far to think of it as something akin to a ruptured appendix, not somebody who might, but for untreated chlamydia, have made his or her appearance next August, irrevocably changing Robin’s life. Don’t think about it, what’s the point?

Robin set off to take over surveillance on Jim Todd at midday. This was the first time Robin had followed the cleaner, and she’d donned her warmest coat, a useful beanie that concealed her hair, plus a scarf that was not only useful protection against the very cold day but handy should she need to bury her face in it. Shah had already texted Robin Todd’s current location: a café on Kingsway. The agency had at last, by dint of watching the cleaner, found out which Lebanese restaurant he lived over, and discovered that he rarely emerged from the building before noon on the days when he wasn’t cleaning. Robin remained alert for anyone following her, as she had ever since the unknown man had forced the rubber gorilla into her hand in Harrods, but was certain nobody had.

‘Bloody freezing, isn’t it?’ were Shah’s first words when Robin joined him. ‘He’s been in there half an hour. Late breakfast.’

‘OK, thanks,’ said Robin.

She expected Shah to leave immediately, because he had a wife and two small children at home, and probably didn’t want to miss too much of the weekend, but to her surprise he lingered.

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I hope I’m not speaking out of turn here, but I wanted to ask you something.’

‘Go on,’ said Robin, wondering whether she was about to hear another complaint about Kim Cochran.

‘Why’s Bijou Watkins calling Strike?’

‘When did Bijou Watkins call him?’ asked Robin, surprised.

‘Yesterday. I was filing expenses at the office yesterday afternoon and I heard Pat passing on the message.’

‘Oh,’ said Robin. ‘Right. I… I don’t know. I mean, they broke up. Are you sure Pat said Bijou—?’

‘It’s not a name that sounds like much else,’ said Shah.

‘No,’ said Robin. ‘That’s true.’

‘We don’t need Strike messing around with Bijou bloody Watkins again,’ said Shah. ‘You missed all that, but for fuck’s sake—’

‘What did I miss?’ said Robin.

‘Private Eye, rumours he’d helped her bug her married lover’s office. And she’s pregnant now, it was in the Mail, they did a sympathy profile of his ex-wife – the papers hate Honbold, he’s the chair of that Campaign for Ethical Journalism thing. We don’t need more publicity about Strike’s sex life, not after that fucking call girl story, and the thing about him shagging women who get evidence for him.’

The anxious knot in Robin’s belly tightened. Loyalty to Strike was conflicting with the desire to assuage Shah’s worries. They didn’t want to lose Shah: he was too good a detective.

‘Watkins could’ve been calling for some professional help,’ Robin temporised. ‘Not for any personal reason.’

‘Then he’d better have bloody well turned her down. We’ve got enough clients, we don’t need women he’s shagging.’

‘He doesn’t sleep with clients,’ said Robin.

‘He’d better not start,’ said Shah. ‘Sorry,’ he added curtly, ‘I know this isn’t your fault, but my wife believed that call girl story. She keeps asking me why I’m working for such a scumbag.’

‘That story wasn’t true,’ said Robin.

‘That’s what I told my wife,’ said Shah, ‘so it’d be good if Strike could keep his nose clean, going forwa – there’s Todd.’

Robin glanced across the road. The almost spherical cleaner, with his shining white pate and tufts of hair over his ears, had just emerged from Black Sheep Coffee, and was shuffling off down the street.

‘See you later,’ Robin told Shah, and she set off, trailing Todd on the opposite side of the road.

Confused and worried by what she’d just heard, Robin wanted to call Strike immediately and ask what was going on, but Todd was heading towards Holborn Tube, which was only a minute’s walk away, and sure enough, he crossed the four lanes of traffic ahead of her and disappeared into the station.

As she descended the escalator, keeping several people between herself and Todd, Robin mentally reviewed the evidence that Strike and Bijou’s liaison had ended months previously. He’d told her explicitly that he’d never considered Bijou a girlfriend. He hadn’t concealed Bijou’s pregnancy from Robin; on the contrary, not long after Robin had come out of Chapman Farm, Strike had told her the child was Honbold’s, with a perfect indifference that supported the impression that he couldn’t care less about mother or baby.

So perhaps Bijou really did want to hire a detective?… except that that didn’t ring true… Andrew Honbold wouldn’t want her hiring Strike, not after her name and the detective’s had been bracketed together in Private Eye… no, thought Robin, the unpleasant wriggling sensation in her stomach intensifying, there was something up, something Strike hadn’t told her.

Todd took the first available train east and sat down, short, fat legs splayed, apparently playing a game on his phone, while Robin stood and swayed, holding on to a ceiling hand strap, ready to move when Todd did, her thoughts a long way away from the egg-shaped man whose reflection she was watching in the dark window.

53

Strike, who had Saturday afternoon off, was currently standing in the inner office, once again contemplating the noticeboard where material relevant to the silver vault case was pinned, which he’d just rearranged.

He was attempting to drown out the low hum of dread that had dogged him since his call with Bijou in work. His eyes were currently fixed on the partial footprint found beneath Wright’s body. Several things about it had struck him, before these had been driven from his mind by the news about Bijou Watkins.

Robin was right: the print had been made by a relatively small foot. Although it was only partial, it was very distinct, and this seemed strange, because it had been found underneath the body, which surely meant it should have been smudged. Yet if it had had time to dry before the body had been moved, Strike could see no reason why the killer hadn’t spotted it and wiped it away.

He’d noticed something else about the print, too. The tread of the trainer that made it was perceptibly worn on the right side. Strike happened to know a lot about gait assessment, because it had formed part of his rehabilitation post his amputation. He’d stood on a light box while the evenness of his footing was evaluated, as part of the adjustment for his prosthesis, and in consequence he’d learned something about the different ways soles wore down if the owner possessed anything in the nature of an imbalanced walk. Unless he was mistaken – and the orthopaedic article he’d just read seemed to confirm his tentative hypothesis – the person who’d worn this trainer might have had a slight limp.

Strike reached for the pad on the table. Flipping it open, he saw what looked like a note Robin had written to herself: PRESENT BARNABY. Strike was immediately reminded of Shanker, and the mysterious ‘Barnaby’s’ where bodies went; but then he remembered that ‘Barnaby’ was the name of her new nephew. Flipping to a fresh page, he wrote the single word ‘LIMP?’ on it, tore it out and pinned it beneath the picture of the footprint.

Strike had replaced the paragraph about Reata Lindvall, the Swedish woman who’d been murdered in Belgium in 1998, with pictures of the murdered Sofia Medina. The Spanish student pouted down at him, her skin the colour of dark honey against her black lingerie, her hair falling in shining waves either side of her face. The provocative vacuity of her expression drained her of all personality.

Beside Medina’s picture were the three photographs Kim had procured of William Wright’s corpse. Strike examined the detailing on the sash for a few seconds, then sat down at his desk, switched on his computer monitor and went to search Amazon for A. H. Murdoch’s ebooks, purchasing what appeared to be the man’s best known work, Secrets of the Craft.

Strike assumed that the number 32, which was picked out in red beads on the sash on the corpse, referred to one of the masonic degrees, and quickly discovered that he was right. Achieving degree thirty-two gave a Freemason the rank of Sublime Prince of the Royal Secret, was symbolised by wavy swords and a Teutonic cross bearing an eagle that also appeared on the sash, and was superseded in status only by the highest degree of all, Sovereign Grand Inspector-General.

Long since out of copyright, Murdoch’s book hadn’t been properly formatted, but scanned into digital form, so that the occasional word was illegible. Strike skim read the entry under Degree Thirty-Two.

Strike scrolled on, until he spotted the word ‘silver’.

The last line brought back uncomfortable thoughts of Bijou Watkins, but before Strike could sink further into gloom, his mobile rang again.

‘Strike.’

‘Ah’ve got tae get out of here,’ said a weak Glaswegian voice.

‘Barclay?’ said Strike, frowning. ‘You all right?’

‘Ah’m fucked. Ye’ll have tae get someone else fer Plug.’

‘Have you been bloody spotted again?’

‘Naw, Ah’ve ate a fuckin’ prawn…’

‘You’ve what?’

‘Ate… a fuckin’ prawn… the fuckin’ sandwich mustae bin mislabelled… fuck…’

Strike heard retching.

‘What are you, allergic?’

‘Aye, Ah’m fuckin’ allergic,’ came Barclay’s weak response. ‘I need tae get tae a fuckin’ bog…’

‘All right, I’ll take over Plug,’ said Strike. ‘Where is he?’

Barclay retched again then gasped,

‘Camberwell. At his mum’s.’

‘Right, you get away,’ said Strike, getting to his feet. ‘Sure you don’t need—?’

‘Naw, the wife’s comin’… I cannae drive like—’

The call terminated as Barclay began to vomit again.

54

Robin was still tailing Jim Todd, who’d got off the first train at Liverpool Street and changed on to the Circle Line, which, for reasons so far undiscovered, appeared to be by far his favourite.

Todd remained on the new train for nearly an hour, intermittently playing the game on his phone and glancing around at the surrounding passengers. Once or twice he shifted seat, although Robin couldn’t see why he’d done so. He didn’t appear to have spotted her, but as a precaution she made small changes to her appearance every now and then while Todd was looking away: putting on the pair of clear-lensed glasses she kept for exactly this kind of situation, taking off her beanie hat and turning it the other way out, so that the red fleece showed rather than the black. She also changed position, sometimes sitting, sometimes standing: anything to stop him realising there was another person in this carriage who seemed to enjoy going round in circles just as much as he did.

All the time Robin was doing these things, and watching Todd, she kept feeling little ripples of anxiety about Strike and Bijou Watkins. It was absurd to think there was still something going on between them, wasn’t it? Bijou was pregnant by another man…

Aldgate… Tower Hill… Monument…

Yet Strike had form on hiding things about his sex life, as Robin knew only too well…

Gloucester Road… High Street Kensington… Notting Hill Gate…

Bijou was pregnant. Their affair had been a year ago, hadn’t it? Perhaps not quite a year… and there was that horrible thing Ilsa had told Robin, when trying to persuade her to talk to Strike about the ill-advised affair… about the lengths to which Bijou had gone, to try and get pregnant by her married lover… Strike didn’t want children, he’d always been clear about that…

Baker Street… Great Portland Street… Euston Square…

The train’s doors opened and closed. A gaggle of teenaged girls entered the compartment, clutching their high street purchases, chatting and laughing. Robin watched them, feeling suddenly old in her practical layers of clothing. Two of the girls were barelegged, their flesh mottled beneath the miniskirts not even an icy January day would scare them out of wearing.

Todd stood up. Robin altered her own position, the better to keep watching him in case he was about to get off the train. Todd was now clinging to a hand strap, still looking at his phone.

Farringdon…

An elderly woman rose from her seat right beside the teenaged girls and moved slowly towards the doors, to be ready when they opened. With surprising speed for such a rotund man, Todd took the vacated seat. Now he was positioned right in front of the mottled, miniskirted legs, his small feet crossed, his head bent over his phone, seemingly intent on his game.

Barbican…

And seconds before she saw the proof, Robin realised why Jim Todd liked to ride the Circle Line for hours, and she knew why none of the other subcontractors had yet spotted him doing it: because opportunities would be rare in the bitter winter months…

He stealthily extended his phone so that it was underneath the skirt of the miniskirted girl standing with her legs apart for balance. Robin made an involuntary movement, and either this, or some sense that he was being watched, caused Todd to look round, straight into Robin’s eyes.

‘OI!’

Robin wasn’t the only person who’d seen it: a tall black man wearing gigantic headphones was pointing.

‘I SAW THAT, YOU FUCKING NONCE!’

The man in headphones tripped over a neighbour’s rucksack as he lunged for the cleaner and Robin was blocked on one side by the agitated teenaged girls, one of whom was saying fearfully, ‘What did he do? What did he do?’ and, on another, by a clutch of people craning their heads to see what the commotion was. Todd was already at the door as the train pulled into Barbican station; he plunged out into the crowd waiting to board and disappeared from sight.

‘Excuse me – excuse me!’ Robin said loudly, trying to pass. Finally managing to fight her way out of the door, she looked frantically up and down the platform, but Todd was nowhere to be seen.

55

Strike had arrived outside Plug’s mother’s house in Vestry Road to take over from the stricken Barclay. The sun had set and the puddle of pinkish vomit in the gutter he’d noticed when he arrived had faded into darkness.

Just as he was settling in for what was likely to be an evening spent in his BMW, the front door of the house opened, and Strike’s target emerged alone, bundled up against the cold in a thick black jacket. To Strike’s displeasure, Plug didn’t get into his car, but set off on foot, giving the detective no choice but to follow suit.

Wishing he’d had the foresight to bring gloves, Strike followed Plug along Peckham High Street. He soon revised his initial guess that Plug was going to get a takeaway, because the man kept walking, eventually disappearing beneath the archway of Queen’s Road Peckham station.

On the platform, Plug approached a second man, who was stockily built, with an air of barely repressed aggression and an almost shaven head.

Strike’s suspicions about Plug’s regular trips to the compound outside Ipswich, the businesslike associations with other rough-looking men and the strange episode of the creature in the shed were as far as ever from being proven. This was the first time he’d been in a situation where he might be able to listen in on the man’s conversation, so he muted his mobile, and ambled closer to the twosome, whose conversation was currently desultory, and conducted in low voices.

‘Wossee offerin’?’

‘Grand,’ said Plug.

‘Worf more.’

‘’S’what I told him. She’s got a lot more in ’er.’

The two men fell silent, both looking truculent. It was hard to tell whether they disliked each other or were bosom friends; they belonged to that category of Englishman whose love and hatred bore almost identical faces.

The train arrived and Strike followed the men into the carriage. It was crowded, so it didn’t seem unnatural for him to choose a seat near them, pretending to be texting, but actually making notes on as much of the conversation as he could hear.

‘’Eard you ’ad trouble up Ipswich.’

‘Not trouble. People, ’s’all. But they ain’ bin back.’

The train moved off. Strike strained his ears.

‘Gaz’s bitch might do it.’

‘Fuck that,’ said Plug.

‘She’s lookin’ good.’

‘If you wanna waste your money,’ sneered Plug.

The train rattled on towards London Bridge.

56

Robin had chased along passages and searched crowded escalators, but found no sign of Jim Todd. It probably wasn’t the first time he’d been spotted upskirting, and maybe he had strategies for such contingencies, had hiding places in his favourite Circle Line stations, and knew the quickest ways to escape above ground. Shortly after she’d given up looking for him, Robin saw the young man who’d also spotted what Todd was up to, and the teenaged girls, now tearful and agitated, talking to an Underground official, but Robin knew nothing would be done. The crime was too commonplace and Todd was gone. What was the woman in the navy blue uniform supposed to do about it?

With a stitch in her side from all the running she’d just done, Robin leaned up against the tiled wall of the station platform, watching Saturday-night drinkers and diners pass, and imagined the snide comments Kim was going to make when she heard that Robin had lost Todd at Barbican, just as she’d lost Plug in Victoria station. Then – because it had been preying on her mind for hours now, and even the revelation of what Todd was up to, riding the Circle Line for days at a time, couldn’t drive it out of her head – she thought about Strike and Bijou.

She had an excuse to call him, now. Strike had the evening off, so he was probably at home. She’d tell him about Todd’s upskirting, then slip in a casual question about why Bijou was calling the office. She’d tell him Shah had been worried about it, frame the whole thing as a personnel matter. Thus resolved, Robin returned to the escalator and, in spite of her stitch, walked up it, keen to call Strike sooner rather than later.

Out on dark Aldersgate Street, she rang Strike, but the call went straight to voicemail. She left no message, but tried again, with the same result.

Something that was worse than anxiety pierced her. It was Saturday night. Where was he, with his phone turned off? Robin watched the passing traffic for a few more seconds, then turned and headed back into the station, and as she descended the escalator, she remembered the night Strike had come over to the flat to hear what Murphy had to tell them about Jason Knowles, and how he’d said ‘I’m meeting Bijou’. Perhaps that hadn’t been a joke. Perhaps he had been off to meet Bijou.

Murphy had wanted to see her tonight, but she’d had to work, so they’d agreed to spend Sunday together. The thought of the following day spent with her boyfriend ought to be cheering her, should mitigate this awful mixture of fear and anger, but it didn’t. Robin wanted to look Strike in the face as she told him about Todd, and asked him about Bijou Watkins.

She knew as soon as she entered Denmark Street that Strike wasn’t there, because the lights were all off, both in the attic flat and in the office. Nevertheless, Robin called him again while looking up at the windows. The call went to voicemail once more.

He’s out with her.

You don’t know that.

Then why isn’t he picking up his phone?

Robin let herself in through the street door and climbed the three flights of metal stairs to Strike’s attic flat, knowing it would be fruitless, but determined to make sure. She knocked on the door, but there was no answer, so she descended to the office level, unlocked the glass door and turned off the alarm.

In the inner office, she switched on the light, vaguely registering changes to the noticeboard since she’d last laid eyes on it. She checked the time on her phone: it was far earlier than she’d expected; her long day, and the darkness of the sky outside the window, had made her imagine it was nine o’clock at least. Heart thudding in her throat, she sat down in her usual seat and remained motionless for a minute or two, thinking. Then, taking a deep breath, she phoned Ilsa Herbert.

‘Hi, Robin,’ said Ilsa, answering after a few rings. ‘How’re you?’

Robin was certain she heard a trace of caution.

‘Been better,’ said Robin truthfully. ‘How’re you? How’s Benjy?’ she asked of her godson.

‘Walking,’ said Ilsa, ‘which means he’s tugging on leads of table lamps and headbutting the coffee table twice a day, so that’s nice and restful. What’s going on?’

‘Not much,’ said Robin, with faux lightness. ‘Kind of a fraught time, one way or another. Busy at work and the Land Rover’s packed up.’ She swallowed. ‘You know about Bijou Watkins?’

There was a very slight pause. Robin could picture Ilsa’s wary expression.

‘What about her?’

‘About her and Strike,’ said Robin.

‘Has… he’s told you?’ said Ilsa, and Robin’s pulse quickened even further.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Oh, thank God,’ said Ilsa, sounding immensely relieved. ‘He asked me not to tell you, said he was going to do it, but I literally said to Nick half an hour ago, “I bet he doesn’t.” Has he spoken to her yet?’

‘I think he’s doing it now,’ said Robin, whose ears were ringing.

‘Meeting her face to face?’

‘Yes, I think so.’

‘Oh God,’ said Ilsa, and she turned her mouth from the phone to tell her husband, ‘Robin says he’s meeting Bijou tonight.’ Ilsa came back to the receiver. ‘I tried to warn him, you know I did! If it is his… he says it can’t be, but I told you about her little condom trick, didn’t I?’

‘The thing where she took them out of the bin?’ said Robin, the shrill whine in her ears becoming louder. ‘Yes, you told me.’

‘Between you and me, the gossip around chambers is that it is Corm’s, that she realised she was pregnant after he’d ditched her, so tried to pass it off as Honbold’s, but that’s probably what people want to have happened. Neither of them are popular – Bijou and Honbold, I mean. Did Corm tell you about the super-injunction?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Robin.

‘I’m amazed Honbold got it through. If your public persona’s all about personal ethics and family values, and you’ve cheated on your wife and want to wriggle out of your obligations to a daughter you’ve fathered out of wedlock, that’s pretty solid public interest. But Honbold’s got friends in high places, and he didn’t get to be as rich as he has without knowing how to argue a case. He must’ve persuaded them there’s no story, but that won’t hold for long, the papers will be straining at the leash. I suppose it’s going to come down to a DNA test and then the papers will be able to let rip, one way or another… God, I hope she’s not Corm’s.’

‘So it’s a daughter, is it?’ said Robin’s voice, from some far-off place that didn’t seem to be connected to either her numb mouth or her paralysed brain.

‘Yes. I’d say she can’t be his, because Bijou was trying to trap Honbold for ages, but – I hate saying this – she really did fancy Corm. It wasn’t a random thing. I think she quite liked the idea of being Mrs Cormoran Strike, but then he ditched her, obviously, so it was back to Honbold.’

‘Right,’ said Robin’s disembodied voice.

‘I’d feel sorry for her, it’s no joke, being thrown over right after you’ve given birth, but she’s so obnoxious I can’t help feeling she’s got what was coming to her. But I feel for Corm… I know he’s a dickhead, but he used protection, and condoms are, what—?’

‘Ninety-eight per cent effective,’ said Robin like an automaton, ‘if used correctly.’

‘Unless someone fishes them out of a bin. God, it’s such a bloody mess.’

‘Well, nobody made him do it,’ said Robin, whose throat was rapidly constricting. ‘Nobody forces him to sleep with women and dump them, just because they’re willing, and he wants a bit of no-strings fun.’

‘I know, but for it to blow up in his face like this…’

‘Ilsa,’ said Robin, who didn’t think she was going to be able to sustain the pretence that she was untroubled much longer, ‘I’m going to have to go, sorry.’

‘Oh,’ said Ilsa, sounding disconcerted. ‘Why – did you just call for a chat, or—?’

Shit.

‘Oh God, sorry,’ said Robin, feigning absent-mindedness, though her traitorous throat was closing even as she spoke, and her eyes were stinging, ‘I just wondered if you were free for a drink some time this week.’

‘Not this week,’ said Ilsa, ‘I’m in court, we’re snowed under. Could I text you about the following week?’

‘Great,’ said Robin, but it came out as a kind of squeak.

‘Robin?’ said Ilsa.

She couldn’t immediately answer.

‘Robin?’ said Ilsa again, now sounding worried. ‘You did know everything I’ve just told you, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ Robin forced herself to say, but there was no dissembling the fact that she was crying, now. ‘I just… it’s just a mess, like you said. Please don’t tell Strike I called you to talk about it, he’ll be annoyed… especially if he knows I got upset.’

‘No, of course I won’t tell him,’ said Ilsa sympathetically. ‘I’m really sorry, Robin, I know this is a nightmare for the agency, especially after those stories in the press.’

‘Yes,’ said Robin, ‘that’s the problem… but hopefully… well, we’ll wait and see what the DNA test says.’

‘I’ll call you about a drink, week after next,’ said Ilsa.

‘Great,’ said Robin. ‘Bye, then.’

She hung up, then slumped down onto the desk, face in her arms, and a dam broke inside her, and the unshed tears of months poured forth at last, as the confused tangle of feelings inside her, some acknowledged, but most long repressed, burst free of all constraint.

So Strike might have just become a father, along with Matthew, Stephen, Martin, Shah and Barclay, whereas she… she’d tried not to think about her baby, because it had been just a bunch of cells, hadn’t it? Not an actual human being that was hers, but still, she’d been robbed of what so many other women did deliberately and with ease, even if it meant a grubby tryst with a bit of slimy rubber in a bin; no, her child had been created through carelessness and ignorance, then there’d been agony for her, and death for the tiny person who’d lodged in her fallopian tube, forever barred from meeting its mother, and Robin hadn’t wanted that baby, but she mourned it now, full of shame that it had both lived and died…

And Strike, for whom she had feelings she ought not to have, feelings she’d tried to extinguish but which lately had been gaining power over her again – he’d given her that bracelet, and he harped on Charlotte’s suicide note, and he offered her loans for a Land Rover, simply to keep her bound to him and the agency; it was all cynical, he wasn’t honest with her, he didn’t warn her that fresh scandals were going to explode like landmines under her feet. He didn’t want what Murphy was offering her; no, all he wanted was to keep sneaking around and hiding massive secrets about other women, and maybe she’d find out in another year’s time that he’d slept with Kim Cochran, and there’d be more sordid fallout and another shattering discovery for Robin, who needed to stop, now, for ever, feeling anything other than friendship for him – though right now she barely felt that…

And she cried out of guilt, because she hid so many things from Murphy, especially the biggest of the lot: that she felt as she shouldn’t about her detective partner, there was no denying it now, but that had to end, today…

How many times was she going to torture herself about his real feelings, while he was busy concealing huge secrets from her? How much of her life was she going to put on hold, in hope and expectation – she was admitting it to herself, now – that Cormoran Strike would become sincere and straightforward, and tell her plainly what he wanted and felt? He’d shown her what he wanted, he didn’t need to say it: a string of good-looking women, to be discarded when no longer convenient, and Robin on tap to help him run the successful business that was now being threatened by his own actions. What kind of starry-eyed fool expected that man to change, at the age of forty-two, into somebody who wanted monogamy and a settled home life?

At last, taking deep breaths, Robin sat up, wiping her stinging, swollen eyes on the sleeve of her coat, then went to fetch toilet roll from the bathroom on the landing, to blow her nose and wipe the desk which was now smeared with tears and mascara. Then she sat back down, still hiccoughing occasionally, with a headache burgeoning and the long Tube ride home still to come.

She wasn’t going to betray Ilsa; two could play the duplicitous game of not admitting what they knew, but she couldn’t stand speaking to Strike, not until she’d got herself under better control.

The office phone rang. Robin didn’t want to answer: she didn’t want Strike to know she’d been here. Nevertheless, she automatically switched the phone to speaker so she could hear the message, if there was one. She listened as Pat’s gravelly voice informed the caller that they’d reached the Strike and Ellacott Detective Agency, that office hours were nine to five, and that they could leave a message. There was a beep, and then a rasping male voice spoke.

‘You were told to leave it. Fucking leave it, or you’ll get what’s comin’ to ya, ya fuckin’ bitch!’

A click: the caller had hung up.

Eyes still smarting, Robin stared at the phone. Even in her current state, she thought she recognised that voice as the same one that had hissed in her ear ‘it’ll ’appen again unless you fuckin’ give this up,’ while grasping her neck in Harrods. She thought about Todd (the upskirting incident seemed hours ago) and the way he’d looked directly into her eyes, almost as though he’d sensed her watching him, but it hadn’t been Todd who’d thrust the gorilla into her hand; she’d have felt his massive belly pressing into her back.

You were told to leave it. The unknown man knew she wasn’t ‘leaving it’. How? Had Todd called someone and told them he’d been followed by Robin? Was the caller watching the office right now? It wouldn’t be the first time someone had turned up in Denmark Street to menace the agency. She could well imagine both Strike and Murphy barking at her to be careful, to call a cab, to take this threat seriously, as men did, when they were worried, when they’d rather turn their aggression on you than assess the situation dispassionately, but if the man on the other end of the phone genuinely wanted to hurt her, why leave messages first? Would they be sensible to track her to the office, after what had just happened?

Dismissing the call from her mind, Robin switched on her computer. She needed to find something she could use to get out of the trip to Scotland on Monday night…

Forty minutes later, she had two sound reasons, which had come so easily she felt as though some kindly fate had reached out through the screen to pat her on the head. Here. You deserve a break.

Robin picked up her phone, then set it down again. She didn’t want to text Strike, because he might call back. Instead she opened email. After considering what salutation she should use, she decided to dispense with one entirely, because he wasn’t her ‘dear’ anything, tonight.

I’ve found out why Todd’s so keen on riding the Circle Line all afternoon. He’s upskirting young girls. He was spotted while I was watching him and was literally chased off the train. In the commotion I lost him.

Robin stopped to think, then typed on.

I’ve been thinking about next week’s trip and it seems pointless for both of us to do Jade Semple when you’re the one who’s persuaded her to talk. I’ve just identified the school Sapphire Neagle was attending before she disappeared and I want to try and talk to a friend of hers on her way in/out of school, and find out what she knows about Oz, if anything.

I’ve also been looking at Valentine Longcaster’s Instagram. He’s been recceing a place called God’s Own Junkyard for a fashion shoot on Tuesday and I know the place. It’s in Walthamstow, not far from me. I think I should go along in person and try and interview him. He might be more likely to talk to me than you.

I’ll drive up to Ironbridge on Wednesday to do Dilys Powell, because I’m the one who’s talked to her previously.

Robin stopped typing again. Her eyes strayed to the noticeboard and she noticed that Strike had taken down the paragraph about Reata Lindvall. Robin knew perfectly well that none of their suspected Wrights had any known connection to Reata Lindvall, or to Belgium, but she was glad to have another reason to be angry at Strike, who’d cavalierly removed the thing she’d stumbled across on Christmas Eve, with her ex-husband standing beside her, and her angry boyfriend in the pub behind her, and Robin’s mind focused, as ever, on the job.

I noticed you’ve taken down the paragraph about Reata Lindvall but as we haven’t got any other leads on who ‘Rita Linda’ might be, could you please ask Jade whether Niall or anyone in the family has either heard of her, or has any connection with Liège?

Robin paused yet again, staring at the screen with stinging eyes, then typed on.

I won’t be able to hang around long in Ironbridge, because Ryan and I are looking at houses together and have got a couple lined up to view next week.

See you Tuesday.